pronoy_banerjee

All right guys, this is my first DIY post.

Since many days i was planning to do something with LED to my bike's tail light, not only is it bright, it consumes very less power.

Since, my battery got discharged recently, i thought to myself it was high time, to get things done/ Do it myself...

At first i was searching for LED clusters with a double filament bulb connector, which are readily available in the market,
to my surprise, nothing of this sort was available after searching for long.

Finally i decided to do it myself..
I was pretty confused as to which shape the LED's would look good, i chose to do it in a round shape..

THINGS REQUIRED:

1. LED's number depends on what shape you like, for me it was 24 per cluster.
2. Resistors: for bikes its best to get a higher value resistor, coz when the bike is in motion the voltage is never 12V, it varies from 11.5V - 14.0V. so i used 180 Ohms resistors in series with 3 normal 8mm white LEDs
3. PCB you need something to mount the LED's on.
4. Soldering Iron, Solder, Soldering Flux/Soldering cream, wires (i used a very very old soldering iron)

5. Pliers (preferably nose plier).

Ok , now we're ready to go..

Setting things up

- Mount the LED's on the PCB as you desire.
I did it the following way


- Figure out how you are comfortable soldering the LED's on the PCB.
- Do the Calculations and draw the ckt diag. for your ease.
Here is mine

- Start by the tail light.



- Do the rest of the Soldering carefully and its better if you do it 3 Led's and a resistor at a time.
after you're done, it'd look something like



- Now, unscrew the tail light cover, and take out the bulbs, You dont need to break a perfectly fine bulb, I got 2 fused bulbs from the HH Workshop



- Figuring out the negative terminal of the bulb is a tricky 1, in some bulbs the positive lead has a sleeve under the glass encasing, if not, you'd have to connect it to a series of 3 LED and a resistor and find out. coz filament bulbs dont have specific polarity, but LED's do..

- After you have done this, you are ready to go, cut the PCB with a BIG Scissor (the metal 1 that tailors have or wire cutters can do the job) , so that it fits in the chamber.

Sorry could not click the pictures of mounting on the holder (was running out of time)
- I mounted it using metal wires and power grip tape, until my M-seal model is ready.
- I also used 6 Led's on the top of the chamber on a small PCB with 2 resistors. i used insulation tape on it..
- Was a tedious job mounting both the things.
- After I put back the tail light cover, it looked something like.

Tail Light



Brake light




The images dont do justice, in real world they are very bright,
I doubt on the reliability of the adhesive tape, would do the M-seal really soon..

The main advantage of LED's..

Previously the Power hogging bulbs consumed (5W / 21W) X 2 that is 52W the power consumption is around 4.3A

now with the LED's the total power consumption is around 190mA X 2 that is only 4W on braking


This was the first time i did something of this sort on my bike, comments are encoraged, if any queries, do lemmi know

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sunilg

DIY approved.

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fayad555

Good job!
You have soldered the components on the opposite side here..LEDs may not be attached to the pcb and may become loose..not much of a problem as far as the setup works..
This is correct..


I too have done a similar LED setup for my tail lamp.

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pronoy_banerjee

Yes i realized it later..

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rajr

Nice work.

Are the resistors not getting heated up.

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pronoy_banerjee

Resistors do get heated, but not to a catastrophic extent.

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MAXzma

Brilliant work. Very thoughtful too when it comes to power consumption. Makes sense! Thinking of doing something like this for my tail lamps and indicators as well. It's in the pipeline and will post pics once its done.

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hellbreaker46

where to get these LEDs and resistors from?

abhijeet080808

The LEDs should have been on the other side of the board for better aesthetics.

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Janesh.J

The resistors do get heated up if they are in parallel, try using higher watt capacity resistors, thought they will heat, but they wont burn out.

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