Bike light circuit questions

[moody07747]

i just wired up some halogen headlights and a LED tail light for my bicycle and have some questions of battery life

ive been getting a good hour and a half of use from the system and am following the plans from this site:
https://www.dansworkshop.com/Monster Quartz Halogen Bike Light.shtml

20W bulb for low beam, 35W bulb for high beam
and as for the reat tail light.,.. i have this wired in
https://www.allelectronics.com/cgi-bin/category.cgi?category=search&item=CLD-4R&type=store

i took some amperage readings on the circuit:


Light(s)__________Amps
high beam...............2.92A
Low beam...............1.70A
Red LED tail light.....0.05A
red + high...............2.97A
red + low................1.75A

im running this all on a 12V 5A rechargable sealed lead acid battery made for a security system.
got it from the radioshack years ago and they dont sell it on their site anymore...

i would like to try to get at least 4 hours out of this setup on high beams with the reds on.
i was thinking of useing something like LEDS, will these produce more light and take less amperage?

any suggestions???

thanks

 

[williB]

yes you can save heaps of power by switching to a Luxeon type LED for your head lamp..
your high beam alone uses 11 watts if you switch to a 3W LED you can save 8 Watts . they are very bright also..

 

[moody07747]

yes you can save heaps of power by switching to a Luxeon type LED for your head lamp..
your high beam alone uses 11 watts if you switch to a 3W LED you can save 8 Watts . they are very bright also..

thanks ill try those LEDs

whats the best place to get them?

 

[Oznog]

Actually, you can't. Not if you want the same light level.

LEDs are actually less efficient than full size halogens. Halogen technology does not scale well so the smaller devices become somewhat less efficient and LEDs can become more efficient in this range. But since LEDs do not focus as well then the amount of power required may become higher again.

Since halogens don't scale, LEDs are useful for producing small amounts of light which can be really impressive when it's dark out and you have nothing to compare it against. If a small amount of power is needed, LEDs can do a good job, if you need a higher level of light power, halogen's efficiency gets better and becomes more efficient.

If you want to get a high efficiency AND high power, HID is far more efficient than LEDs or halogens, by a factor of 2x-3x! HID is a xenon arc discharge, similar to a camera flash tube but designed for continuous use. The little 13W heads produce the same light as a 35W halogen, very bluish white, for around $100-$140. I tried one out at Academy (like $300+ with battery and charger) and I gotta say it IS an impressive amount of light, to put it mildly. The housing remains pretty cool. And it's tiny!
**broken link removed**

I've heard some bikers have banned them from their groups, because they are so powerful they blind (or simply ruin the night vision of) others in the group, not to mention oncoming bikers, possibly even oncoming vehicles.

No, as far as anybody knows you can't modify a camera flash tube to become a HID. The question's been asked already.

 

[audioguru]

Even if you add a lens to focus a 3W or 5W Luxeon, I don't "see" how it could equal the beam width and brightness of a 35W halogen headlight. Maybe if you used a few or more of them. Also, they need a DC to DC current regulator which can feed strings of two or three in series.

 

[moody07747]

im not liking the $100 prices :roll:

what about a bigger battery?

i saw a rechargable sealed lead acid on the net
12V 17AH
https://www.allelectronics.com/cgi-bin/category.cgi?category=160400&item=GC-217&type=store

i little bigger but i can always modify my battery mount again...

edit:
or even something like this monster
https://www.jameco.com/webapp/wcs/s...toreId=10001&catalogId=10001&productId=318852
35 pds. wow!

----------------------------------------
i like my halegon setup...
im really leaning towards a different type of battery

if lead acid even a good choice for this type of use?

 

[moody07747]

took a look on ebay

**broken link removed**

maby i could swap in for some HID fog lights...

 

[Oznog]

took a look on ebay

**broken link removed**

maby i could swap in for some HID fog lights...

Fraud! "*Gives your car the HID look bright light"
Most of that stuff on eBay (such as this one) which mention "HID" isn't HID. It's just halogen, uses standard halogen bulbs, and will work no different than the 35W halogens you have now. In fact they often use a blue filter on either the lens or the bulb itself to change the beam from yellowish to bluish, which reduces the total light output.

HID has only 3 classes of product on the market. There's the little bike/SCUBA helmet lights like I mentioned. There's 12v 35W ones which are always takeouts from very high end cars. Sadly even on eBay these are not cheap, and you need to get a ballast/starter, cable, tube, and projector housing that all match so putting it together with loose eBay parts isn't practical or cheap. Plan on at least $100 for a single. And anyways these are just too powerful, it takes 35W so your battery life is still screwed. The third type is 110v/220v stadium/gym lights, these have used HID for many years which is obviously not what you need.

So basically the only thing that does your job is the $140 helmet light head. I think I may have seen them for $100 somewhere but I'm not sure and there may have been something questionable about them.

Battery size is obviously an issue. Li-ion is much better in terms of power-to-weight ratio but it's also quite expensive. Evens still, trying to power a halogen of 35W for 12hrs would take a larger battery than anyone has ever put on a bike. 4.4 amp-hr is the biggest li-ion commonly used for bikes. That will get you around 4 1/2 hrs out of a HID but only 1 1/2 hrs out of a 35W halogen.

Compact flourescent efficiency is quite high, better than halogen and LED, but less than HID. The difficulty is since the light is emitted from a large surface area it cannot be focused with a reasonably sized reflector thus generally not useful for headlight or flashlight.

Basically the only thing that will help is that HID head, but it'll help a lot!

 

[moody07747]

ok i thought ide check up on all this and here is what i have to say...

I want to get another battery...a bigger 12V that is

at this point ill get almost anything.

if you guys had a setup like this, what type/Amperage battery would use get and use?

ill get a battery based on all your responses

thanks

 

[zachtheterrible]

oznog, I'm going to have to give those HID lights a go someday :lol:

I'm just curious, are you saying that halogen is more efficient than LED only because it can be focused more readily? If we're not talking about any kind of focusing is it still more efficient?