ALTERNATIVE FOR ULTRA WHITE LEDS AND SOME WORDS ON MEASUREMENT

Hola amigos.

I always have problems with the head light capability on the T�n�r� 660s. As a side note, I live and ride a lot on secondary and back roads in Colombia, and those roads, being paved or dirt, have no public lighting and normally are full of holes, ditches, rocks, animals, people, cars parked for fun or because mechanical problems, and without hazards or something! Trucks and tractors without tail lights, etc.... and bad signaling. Night ridding is therefore nerve breaking! You really need good lights, to mark curves and turns and to see those *******s parked on the road without lights, among others.

This is the way I measure, which I learned long ago while working for German battery manufacturer VARTA:

In my 660, battery is normally at about 12.6 to 12.9 volts. When I start the engine, battery voltage drops to about 11, that is OK since right after I get those 13 to 14.5 FLOATING volts generated by the magneto, meaning energy is flowing INTO the battery.

In the past I had a couple of 55w auxiliary lights that kill my battery in minutes. That is, floating volts dropped under 12.5, meaning that the battery was helping the magneto to provided energy when those 55wx2 lights where ON.

So, I replaced the two parking lights (those little ones on each side of the headlamps) and the license plate light for LEDs, saving about some 30 watts.

Still, when I connected the two 55W auxiliary lights, floating voltage dropped under 12,5 volts, meaning that again my battery is helping the magneto to produce energy.

So, with those 55x2 watts, I could not move the bike, since the battery was being drained. So I decided to drop the 55 w bulbs and use 35 watts instead, that worked fine in the charging system but provided a little or non lighting for driving at night.

I changed the auxiliary lights for those small and ultra white LEDs (daylights) from china, and of course the electrical system works fine since the energy need is very little for LEDs. However, white light is no good for fog, rain and night. What's more, at night I had to turn off the LEDs since the light spectrum destroyed the spectrum of the normal, yellowish, low and high beam lights.

So I talked to some friends in the movie industry that know a hell of a lot about lights, and while they agree that ultra white (6000 kelvin or more of color temperature) is not good for night vision, they suggested to put a yellow optical film on the magnifying lens of the LEDs. I got best brand 3M, and the conclusion is that in spite of loosing a bit of lighting power, the LEDs now deliver a better, yellowish to green light, useful at night and in rain and fog.

I hope this helps!

Juan, exactly my experience too. I have twin 10w LED (white) spots which blinded oncoming traffic at night as well as did NOT provide adequate "vision" on dark nights despite being 1200 lumens each. The yellow filter solved both these problems for me.

Buy the best quality you can afford, like Juan did above!