The Tech Section is no the proper place for posting questions....the purpose of that section is proven "How To" threads.

When adding an LED bulb to the headlight, it is important that you buy a bulb that has the proper vertical cut off for the low beam light.  The shields built into the bulb are what keeps you from shining the light into folks eyes when the low beam is in use....without the cut off built into the bulb, your light will be shining too high and will be just like using your high beam.

The same is true when you add the LED or other driving lamps...they don't have any vertical control of the light and they do shine a lot of light at other drivers.  Most of these driving lights don't shine very far down the road and only light up the road immediately in front of the bike.  (I was riding in the Blueridge area at night, and a group of about 6 bikes passed by.....and one of the group had both an LED headlight and a couple of LED driving lamps.....and his lights were blinding bright - not sure how safe you are when you are making it so other folks are blinded when you approach them).

Here is a link to the most recent LED discussion.

http://suzukisavage.com/cgi-bin/YaBB.pl?num=1453064396/0

It is a math issue.  The bike has approximately 100 Watts of charging power.  The power consumption by the turn signals and brake light can mostly be ignored....as those are only used intermittently.  That leaves the following:

The front running lights and brake light have 1157 bulbs, and they are 8 watts each on the low element.  (3x8=24 watts).

A standard headlight bulb is 55w low beam, 60 watt high beam.  You can get 45/45 bulbs - but the stock headlight on the bike is not all that great and you can use the extra light from the 55/65 bulb.  The headlight therefore is going to be averaged as 60W for using both low/high beam.

The speedometer only has a single small bulb, and it is 3 watt.  The neutral indicator light, turn signal intermittent light, and high beam light are also 3 watt - but are used intermittently.  Lets use 2 watts total for the intermittent use.

The front turn Signals/Brake light uses the bright element of the 1157 bulb, the rear turn signals use the 1156 bulb, and all 5 of these use 21 watts each.  Since they are not on all the time and only used when turning  or braking.....lets use 2 watts total.

The combined total of the above is 24+60+2+2+2 = 90 watts - which leaves 10 watts for charging the battery.  10 watts/12 volts provides 0.8 amps of battery charging capacity.  Most battery manufacturers recommend that slow charging should not exceed 2 amps - so this gives you about half what the maximum charging rate is.

So....in this crude estimate you don't have any extra power to play with, and this is one reason that folks who run errands and make short trips can run their battery down.  Replacing the 8/21 watt 1157 bulbs with LEDs will drop the 8 watt each for the running lights down to about 0.6 watts each....which will reduce the running light usage from 24 watts to 1.8 watts - which will provide you with another 22 watts for installing LED lights for the driving lights.

(Disclaimer:  I don't know that anyone knows for sure the power rating of the charging system on the Savage.....100 watts has been the standard "guess" on the previous threads).  

Dave, the only thing I see overlooked is power to run the engine.
The Honda group says theirs are 5 or 8 amp... each.
The last thing you want is to short sheet the CDI and coil.
I would throw 10 amps their way and don't poke the bear.

Dave wrote on 04/07/16 at 08:06:10:


I'd wager real money that we have more than that. The charging power is the product of the bikes voltage (V) and peak current (I). So P = V * I.  So, if the bikes alternator has a peak rating of 20 amps @ 14 volts then the peak charging output is (20 * 14) 280 watts.  The Buell Blast, for example, has a charging output rated at 297 watts.  I won't speculate at the real numbers for the S40, but this is definitely something to think about.

I am not qualified to comment about this subject, but the one German site that I keep an eye on shows a lot of Savage/S40s with large driving lights along side the headlight, and sidecar setups with an additional full size headlight.

Could one of us, with access to another rider with a spare battery, just temporarily mount a couple of additional headlights on our Savage/S40 and go for a ride and see what happens?

What is the worst that can happen? A dead battery?

I  don't know?

Kenny G

Kris,

Here is the link:
http://www.savage-distel.de/frame.htm

You will have to flip through a lot of pictures to find what I mentioned. The pics are there somewhere.

Here is one example.

Kenny G

I might as well throw some more gas on the fire. I have posted before that I mounted 2 15watt led driving lights on my s40. When I used them along side the stock low beam at night I had no problems. But I only used them on long rides at speed.(full charging power) I have now gone to a 20/40 watt led sealed beam that has WAYYYYYYY more lighting capability than any h4 bulb I have tried, even a 90/100 watt. If you guys want to have more visibility at night you should go with a led sealed beam. The difference is huge. The bulbs labeled ''daymaker'' really are. Talk to the Harley guys that have them and look at how they light-up the road and the price will be forgotten once you start riding with one.

See the last page of the link Dave mentioned above for pictures and a link for the bulb.