Hi there,

Anyone have a supplier of nice bright rear replacement bulbs. I see 1000's on e-bay, and read that the Halfords ones are not road legal so am a little confused. Razman had a good thread a while back, but his supplier has disappeared.

I need them to have brake 21w and rear 5w in one for a land rover style holder. The power saving is in the rear bulb, but I want to be sure that the brake-light is nice and clear (for obvious reason).

Also I am after sidelights, but I don't mind picking something e-bay ish for these as they aren't really safety critical.

I discovered that with the extra load on the alternator from my EFI, that at night the battery gets sucked dry. So I trimming power and every amp counts (I should be able to get rid of the lamba probe which has a heating element so removing that should also help).

Thanks,

Matt

matt
i think i have some bulbs in the garage, I'll check and send you a u2u later

As far as I know, none of the LED replacement bulbs are E-marked, so not technically road legal. However, as long as they are bright enough and of the correct colour you'd be very unlucky to have any problems in this area.

What is your Alternator rated at? Must be pretty tiny.

quote:

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Originally posted by matt_gsxr
Razman had a good thread a while back, but his supplier has disappeared.

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Excellent replies, what a good forum.

Lars, yes please.

Mike, its the standard alternator on the gsxr1100. The bike used to have carbs that were gravity fed and a bike headlight. The only current draw was a crude CDI unit and the lights. Now I have headlights, fuel pump, lambda probe, megasquirt coil drivers, megasquirt. I don't know the exact amps. I do know that I drove 90miles in the dark (~6kRPM at ~70mph) to Llandow, and after stopping the battery was too flat to turn over the engine (I had a spare battery so it wasn't a big problem).

Thanks Raz.

The hope is that I can nibble away at the current demands, it can't be that far off.

Matt

quote:

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Originally posted by matt_gsxr
Mike, its the standard alternator on the gsxr1100.

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You could also switch to HID headlights. Again, not strictly road legal, but they'll save you ~40% energy from the headlights.

(Aftermarket HIDs use 35w all the time, compared to 55w on full beam and 60w on main for incandescent)

EDIT: I've used ultraleds.co.uk a few times. They're not the cheapest, but I guess you're paying for someone else to try all these eBay ones out and select the best. At least with them you know you'll get the item as it is described.

Chris

[Edited on 5/16/2010 by ChrisW]

U2U sent

Mike,

The water cooled gsxr1100 shares parts with the earlier air cooled gsxr1100 which dates back to 84. It includes the regulator and rectifier in the unit.

When they pulled the plug on the gsxr1100 (too heavy and uncompetitive to sell) they went away for a couple of years before bringing out the gsxr1000, which was totally different and doesn't share anything (until you steal the throttle bodies etc and put them on your gsxr1100 ;-). The rf900 has the same alternator, but never was fuel injected so probably the same part as the old GSXR1000.

In the gsxr1000 they have a separate regulator circuit and the generator is tiny (not quite sure how it all works but it won't fit).

The old air-cooled gsxr engine lived on in various models (Suzuki Bandit's aka gsf) but they kept these on carbs for ages. I need to look at the later EFI gsf models. Maybe post on the oldskool suzuki forum to see if there is a more meaty alternator.

Matt

+1 for HID units - bloomin bright too! They take about 20 mins to fit and I reckon they were my most significant power saver on my car - great for small alternators like ours. Unfortunately it is not practical to have them as main beams due to the time delay during warm-up.

HID is a good idea, but the H4 ones sound a bit dodgy, and I don't like to break the law for no good reason. It did cross my mind that I could just put in dipped lights, as main beam isn't really that important these days as the roads are so busy.


Mikes suggestion seems to be bearing fruit. The gsxr1100 regulator is rated at 25amps, but the later 2001-2004 gsf1200 is rated at 405W (32Amp). (this is the same output as the early Busa's if the internet is to be believed)

So, if I can save a couple of amps with some LED lights, and gain a few amps with an improved alternator, then I can stop worrying.

Doing some current accounting, actually I'll do it in Watts for my set-up;
headlights 2x55W = 110W
sidelights 2x5W =10W
tail lights 2x5W = 10W
Injectors* 48W * duty cycle = 12W
Fuel pump = 120W
Ignition drivers 8A*duty cycle = 72W

Total power = 334W => 28Amps

300W = 25A. So I am losing 3Amps, which from a 8Ah battery is too restrictive.


I've ignored the little gauge lights, megasquirt, sat. nav. power and don't know the duty cycle on the lambda probe heater.


*4x12Ohm injectors. Based on motorway running at 25% duty cycle.
**2x3Ohm Dyna coils running wasted spark, 75% duty cycle (I could drop this to save some juice, but big sparks must be a good thing)



Nice when the theory fits the practice. Time for some new lights and an e-bay hunt for an alternator.

Thanks for your help with this,

Matt

How about totally out of the box thinking. In years past some racecars used a pulley on the driveshaft to drive an alternator.
Your problem seems to come while driving, not while stopped.

quote:

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Originally posted by matt_gsxr
HID is a good idea, but the H4 ones sound a bit dodgy, and I don't like to break the law for no good reason.

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10A for a fuel pump? Really? My ST1100 jobby pulls 5A (just as well cos I've only got 28A to play with....).

My answer is to wallop a pulley on the front of the crank pulley and run a blower and alternator of it (when I eventually get round to it!!)

Ben,

It does sound a lot. The value was from memory, so I am not certain. It is a pain to measure as my ammeter only goes to 10A and surge blows the fuse.

The pressure from the pump is 43psi and the flow rate is maybe 2litres per minute, and doesn't slow down once the rail is at pressure. So the work done is not inconsiderable. I know it draws a fair bit more current than my old carb pump (although that only put out 3psi, and had a pulsed current demand owing to the way that those pumps work).

Is yours fuel injected or carb?

I will measure and post it.

Matt

Hot wired the voltmeter tonight and measured the current into the fuel pump.

3.5Amps not 10A

I guess I need to have a look to see where I'm losing all my amps. Maybe the alternator isn't running on all phases.

I ordered a pair of HID and some nice powerful LED brake lights, and some bog standard sidelight LEDs.

I have had battery problems in the past so anything that moves me in the right direction is a good thing.

Matt

So, as a follow-up,

The rear lamps suggested by Razman turned up and they are excellent. I had tried some other ones, but to be frank the brake lights were inviting an accident. Razmans ones are the business (shipped from China, so not that quick).

The front sidelights turned out to be nice little units (and cheap).

So, the sidelights (from and rear) now draw 0.5A. This is down from around 2A. Also the break lights are still good, and the sidelights are actually a bit brighter FWIW. So all good there.


The HID kit arrived. I ordered a 35W, 6000K set, in bi-xenon H4. This uses a solenoid to move a shield to switch between high and low beam. Took a few days to arrive (China again), was a bit cheap and nasty when it arrived, but it was cheap (£46 including shipping and everything). No instructions (which may have been because it was opened in customs, or maybe because its crap. So, doing an install when you know the thing can generate 30kV with no instructions (at least it wasn't raining yesterday).

Installed it over the last couple of evenings (not made easier by having no earthing points on the glassfibre bonnet) and some of the wiring (the little connectors to the solenoids for dip/main) are of poorer quality than the rest of the kit, which isn't too awful.

Disappointingly, it isn't plug and play. I had to run a power lead back to the battery (the start-up currents are very high). So 20-40 mins, was really about 3-4hours. once holes had been drilled and all the bits mounted.

So, fired them up and they are nice and bright, but not evil. All good so far.

Then I measured the current.

7.7A on dipped (46W), 8.4A on main beam. THere is a further 0.1A going into them from another line (probably powering some control circuitry).

Now, call me a pedant, but 35W x 2 at 12V is 6A. The whole point of this exercise was to drop the current, so I have saved 1.5A when I was expecring to save 3.5A. I am sure that most people don't care about an Amp here or there, but I do.

The chap (dizaa8) is going to get some questions from me and likely a negative feedback if he can't sort it out, I am sure he will think I am mad, but I can't be sending them back (£37 postage is what he charged, £9 for the item) and messing around.


Any thoughts appreciated.

Matt

Matt, Are you measuring the current when powered from the battery or with the alternator (and obviously engine) running?
The reason I ask is that the current will drop a little at 13.5V which is their working voltage. My HID's won't even fire up sometimes without the engine running due to my tiny gel battery.

Fair comment.

This was not with the engine running, but was on a big (50Ah) battery. The voltage won't be far off 12V. Maybe these are non-linear, i.e. more volts will result in much less current. So maybe at 13-14V I will get 35W. That would be a good result.

I'm a bit grumpy as I got rained on, and what I thought would be simple (i.e. mount ballast, or ballst as it is labelled on the devices), connect up existing plug, enjoy the savings in current. Turned into a project. Don't get me wrong I like a good project, but if I knew it was a project then I would have stripped down their loom and done it all properly (i.e. proper sleeving on the solenoid wires, correct length wires, properly fused into fuse box rather than a trailing 30A fuse, etc etc).

I'm just a grumpy old man. I should be revelling in the 3Amps that I have already saved.


Matt

p.s. those brake/rear lights are good, thanks for that tip.