SuzukiSavage.com - Turn signal mounts for auxiliary lights?

philthymike

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Turn signal mounts for auxiliary lights?
07/07/19 at 12:48:41

The LED headlight bulbs I got are 16W at low beam. So I'm thinking I can run 3 of them. And since the custom cross shaped headlight I'm running projects light into a narrow box I want to add a pair of auxiliary lights to provide some lateral spread so I can actually see the side of the road or other lanes.

I got two 4.5" headlight shells with bottom mounts. The idea is to take 16mm bolts and drill and tap it so it can fit into the fork turn signals mounts on each side like the turn signal stalks do.
The bolt will pass through the bottom of a small cast aluminium electrical box secured by a nut on the outside. This box will have one side drilled to mount the aux light and the other side drilled for an aftermarket turn signal lamp. All wires go into the box for splices etc.

Question I have is will the turn signal mounts on the forks withstand the added weight and wind drag?
They look beefy but there's only a 7mm bolt for the clamp.
I'm concerned that they'll slip and turn from wind drag.

Should I just look for a stronger fork mount?

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07 S40 (Thumpy): 666cc big bore, stage 2 webcam, dyna muffler, 412 shocks, Barnett clutch, Kawasaki ZL900 FE

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verslagen1 YaBB Moderator ModSquad Offline Where there's a will, I want to be in it. Posts: 28890 L.A. California Gender:	Re: Turn signal mounts for auxiliary lights? Reply #1 - 07/07/19 at 12:54:16 It may be a 7mm hex but whats the thread size? And if that's a problem, why not drill it out and tap a larger size? Getrdone
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philthymike Serious Thumper Offline Wallowing in my own crapulence Posts: 1413 Philadelphia Area Gender:	Re: Turn signal mounts for auxiliary lights? Reply #2 - 07/07/19 at 13:02:33 Don't know the thread size. I'm not sure there's enough material in the clamp to drill it out for a larger bolt. It may be possible to add a 2nd bolt though.
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verslagen1 YaBB Moderator ModSquad Offline Where there's a will, I want to be in it. Posts: 28890 L.A. California Gender:	Re: Turn signal mounts for auxiliary lights? Reply #3 - 07/07/19 at 14:46:48 I say try it, if it slips then put a bigger bolt in.
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philthymike

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Re: Turn signal mounts for auxiliary lights?
Reply #4 - 07/07/19 at 19:27:34

I guess I'll have to wait and find out. I'm waiting for the 4.5" shells from China. But I went and picked up 5/8" by 2" bolts. I can start on them while I'm waiting. I'll get them prepped and load test the mounts and see if they'll hold.

Need to place an order for 2 of these.
https://www.allelectronics.com/item/1590-lb/diecast-aluminum-enclosure-50.0-x...
They're a bit smaller than I'd like but will get the job done.

Later once it's all wired up if I find that the battery doesn't take a charge then I'm getting technical. I'll use this to run the auxiliary lights.
https://www.allelectronics.com/item/msc-35/3-amp-dc-motor-speed-controller/1....

Then use a PNP power transistor triggered from the output of the PWM controller to drive the headlight. The transistor will invert the phase of the PWM so when the headlight is on the aux lights are off and when the aux lights are on the headlight is off. With a switching rate in the Khz our eyes and the electrical system won't know the difference.

And that speed control knob becomes a fader letting me dim one and brighten the other and vice versa.

Cheat the electrical system into providing twice tthe load it's capable of.

Hopefully it won't come to that. The 48 Watts of 3 LEDs might be fine for the bike. We'll see....

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Re: Turn signal mounts for auxiliary lights?
Reply #5 - 07/07/19 at 19:37:48

Or you could keep things simple , and just put on a better headlight , usually the first things that gets broken if the bike gets dropped is the turn signals ,adding driving lights to the mix won't help.
Where LED's are power saving ,that can be a two way street,if your using the extra power for a GPS or other devices, fine. If not the extra power needs to be shed by the voltage regulator ,which causes it to deal with more heat ,that may shorten it life span.

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philthymike

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Re: Turn signal mounts for auxiliary lights?
Reply #6 - 07/07/19 at 19:59:56

batman wrote on 07/07/19 at 19:37:48:

Or you could keep things simple , and just put on a better headlight , usually the first things that gets broken if the bike gets dropped is the turn signals ,adding driving lights to the mix won't help.
Where LED's are power saving ,that can be a two way street,if your using the extra power for a GPS or other devices, fine. If not the extra power needs to be shed by the voltage regulator ,which causes it to deal with more heat ,that may shorten it life span.

I understand about waste heat. I used to design and troubleshoot hybrid switching power supplies before nafta sent my career to Malaysia. That's why 3 LEDs.
I'm keeping the darn useless headlight because it's Thumpys trademark and I went through alot of crap getting it here from Denmark.

GPS is for feeble minded people who can't tell what direction the sun rises or sets.

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07 S40 (Thumpy): 666cc big bore, stage 2 webcam, dyna muffler, 412 shocks, Barnett clutch, Kawasaki ZL900 FE

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batman Serious Thumper Offline SuzukiSavage.com Rocks! Posts: 3806 osceola new york Gender:	Re: Turn signal mounts for auxiliary lights? Reply #7 - 07/08/19 at 05:52:45 GPS isn't something I'd ever use either , MapQuest if I'm going somewhere new and distant ,at least it shows a direct route .
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philthymike

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Re: Turn signal mounts for auxiliary lights?
Reply #8 - 07/08/19 at 09:42:35

I actually did consider just getting a better headlight. I was shopping for 05-06 Marauder headlights for awhile but gave up because too much junk for so much money. Just not worth it.

Then I realized that I like the headlight I have too much to part with it. It speaks to me.
Adding the extra lighting for the sake of visibility has become important to me since I'm now spending much more time than ever before commuting up and down I95 on Thumpy. In the past month alone I've logged more highway miles on the bike than its had in the past year.
As long as this trend continues I need to be more visible because this is treacherous traffic. Death Race 3000 type stuff.
The stretch I'm running is full of summer beach traffic along with the normal rush hour crowd and it's a volatile mix.

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07 S40 (Thumpy): 666cc big bore, stage 2 webcam, dyna muffler, 412 shocks, Barnett clutch, Kawasaki ZL900 FE

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batman Serious Thumper Offline SuzukiSavage.com Rocks! Posts: 3806 osceola new york Gender:	Re: Turn signal mounts for auxiliary lights? Reply #9 - 07/08/19 at 12:19:02 The Schull expressway was kind of crazy in the early 70's (Navy)
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philthymike Serious Thumper Offline Wallowing in my own crapulence Posts: 1413 Philadelphia Area Gender:	Re: Turn signal mounts for auxiliary lights? Reply #10 - 07/08/19 at 12:31:56 The Surekill Crawlway is as crazy as ever. Luckily for me I don't have to use it. During my Navy days 264 between Norfolk and VA Beach was deathrace 3K. Saw many grizzly accidents involving squids and jarheads running late for morning muster. I think that road took out more service members than the Taliban.
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philthymike

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Re: Turn signal mounts for auxiliary lights?
Reply #11 - 07/11/19 at 18:41:39

I decided to order this cast aluminium box.
http://www.hammondmfg.com/pdf/1590TRPB.pdf
After thinking things through I realized I will have clearance issues for the auxiliary light studs and the mounting bolt into the turn signal mounts and probably no room to route the wires using a smaller box as I was looking at. Also provides room for the PWM controller if needed.
I realize this is going to have a Mad Max aspect to it but I'm fine with that.
The Kurayakn LED lights and the turn signals arrived already. The shells are coming from chine and may not arrive until the end of the month. Soooo...
Waiting.

But I can start working the boxes in the meantime.

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philthymike

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Re: Turn signal mounts for auxiliary lights?
Reply #12 - 07/22/19 at 05:41:55

This project has been a big headache so far. After several weeks I finally got the lamps I ordered from China only to discover one had a cracked glass lens. At 1st it wasn't a problem because I'm sticking the LED in there anyway. Then I find that the lamps shells can't fit the LEDs. Instead of being cheap stamped thin metal it turns out they're thick cast aluminium. I totally didn't imagine that for the price of them. The problem is that they have a nearly 1/2" wide mounting flange all around the mouth of the shell reducing the internal diameter to only 3.5".
The LEDs need a 4.25" opening.

After a week of emails and phone calls the only lamp buckets I can find that are guaranteed to fit the LEDs are actual HD passing lamps for $398 or the Drag Specialties knock-offs.
The vast majority of other sellers cannot provide the I.D. of the buckets that they sell. Which kinda sucks for me.
The DS knock-offs come in either a very cheaply made looking fixed post version for $35 apiece or a good quality version with a proper mount for aiming for $105 apiece.

But I'm going to go with the $15 option.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/6061-T6-Aluminum-Pipe-4-Schedule-10-x-6-Long-4-5-OD-...

I'll just make my own. They won't be fancy looking. Just a pair of lollipops. Cheesy

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Re: Turn signal mounts for auxiliary lights?
Reply #13 - 07/29/19 at 12:56:07

Here's a crude mockup of my lamp housing. The final product will be less than half as tall then seen here. More lollipop than tube shaped. The body is a 4" PVC coupler and an aluminium pipe cap. I intended to use aluminum pipe linked to earlier but that somehow got crushed flat in transit.
The I.D. of the PVC is slightly more than 4.25" but this gap will be helpful for a vibration dampening o-ring.

The assembly will be simple. Metal brackets will be fitted to the back of the LED units and then another bracket connected to those brackets extends to the metal cap. Screws through the cap into threaded holes in the 2nd bracket will tension the entire thing together. The metal cap provides a mount for the waterproof electrical connector and on/off switch. The connector has 9 pins to provide circuits for the Main LED in the center, the multicolor halo and the turn signals which will be stalk mounted to the sides.

I'm still working out the best way to mount the assembly to the turn signal mounts of the forks. I got some thick wall 5/8ths steel tube though instead of bolts I previously had in mind. I may just thread the inside of the tube and mount rubber sandwich dampers to it and then into lamp assembly.

Ignoring the cost of the LED so far I've spent a fraction of the cost of the Drag Specialties passing lamp housing.

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07 S40 (Thumpy): 666cc big bore, stage 2 webcam, dyna muffler, 412 shocks, Barnett clutch, Kawasaki ZL900 FE

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