pondtunes Posted June 9, 2010 Report Share Posted June 9, 2010 I was really, really, really sick of the stock lighting on my shee before I started tearing it down and re-doing it. So I was looking at all sorts of alternatives.. I added a battery to my shee for some underbody LED lighting. Knowing these were LED's and had low current draw I figured I would be safe with a very small battery. So I got the smallest ATV/Motorcycle battery I could find and went from there. The LED's were the only draw on my battery and I didn't go through the trouble of floating the ground and adding a voltage regulator because I could go for nights and nights of running and they never go out. Anyways, My LED supplier just recently started offering a ultra bright tri-LED driving light, so I ordered a couple of them and figured I would give it a shot, and this is the outcome. I kinda like the oldschool retro look of the original stock headlights, so I figured i'd just order up another set of lights to retrofit these new bulbs into. I started modifying my old lenses by first disassembling them. My first attempt was to bend the metal around the glass lens enough to remove the lens and insert the new bulb from the front... This was an epic failure as you can see... Since I had already cracked this one and had new ones on the way I figured I would just cut away the old bulb mount and mount the bulb directly to the back of the housing. (sorry no pic just yet) So using a set of pliers to remove the stock bulb housing, I then used a sharpie to draw around the back of the lens (reflector) what I guessed would be of the correct size then just used a pair of right handed tin snips to cut away the reflector. This allowed the larger tri LED bulb to rest comfortably behind the reflector. These LED's don't really use the stock reflector since they're mounted flush with the back but I wanted to keep the stock headlight look. Once I got the back of the reflector trimmed out enough to accept the new bulb I powered them up, left is the LED bulb, and right is the normal stock headlight both wired to a constant 12v source. Note how white the light is off the LED bulb. And heres a shot of the lights from ahead off to the side a little bit, I was really impressed with the light output these little suckers had. Please forgive my very messy bench and shop, there was a lot going on that week! Heres a picture side by side of the light output difference of the two, stock is on the right, LED is on the left. In retrospect I realize that the stock light was turned on it's side thus why the strip of light up at an angle, they do have some sort of cutoff.. The LED lights have no such cutoff and flood the room with light. I had to fabricate a plug to fit the prongs on the new light but that wasn't a hard task at all, it could be done with a female spade connector easily. I ended up securing the bulb to the back of the reflector and sealing the light back with silicone, i've done a lot of hard riding since then and haven't had any problems with them coming loose or getting water in my headlights, and believe me if water was going to get in there it would have by now.. My shee gets wet and muddy and nasty. Heres a picture with the lights installed, when I was waiting on my pipes. I had really really really hoped these things would run off the stock electrical system with no further modifications but they won't. The lights illuminate and don't dim at idle but as soon as I revved the throttle and the voltage ramped up the Test light didn't survive. We were getting ready for our trip to buscoe so I went ahead and put two of them in, and disconnected the switch from the stock electrical system. I ran a wire from the switch to my very small ATV battery and wired them up so I could have light at any time. My underbody LED's will work for days and days and days before bringing the battery down. Once I added the headlights I can get two long nights of running before my battery goes dead. I have two of these batteries and just swapped them out and charged the dead one when it was out, since we were tent camping I didn't have power to run a battery charger. When im at home I just plug in the charger to the quick connector on the battery and always have a fresh charge. This is my battery, its the smallest one I could find size wise at the advance/autozone. I made a bracket to mount it right over where the tors adjustment used to be. It fits quite neatly there and is held in place by the gas tank plastic. Picture of us pulling the shee out of a massive mudhole with the LED Headlights on and the shee off... See? those LED lights underquad are completely functional and are used to illuminate the ground on the trails if one gets stuck As for light output once I got them aimed i've been completely satisfied with the light these things put out, I can see down the trails and off to the side quite well, they throw the light a lot further out than I expected. I'll try to get some photos tonight when it's dark of the difference in the stock light pattern vs these LED driving lights. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xX JAMMER Xx Posted June 9, 2010 Report Share Posted June 9, 2010 looks great. but where is the red at on your bike? in the picture where you mounted your battery you see all the red frame and stuff. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pondtunes Posted June 9, 2010 Author Report Share Posted June 9, 2010 looks great. but where is the red at on your bike? in the picture where you mounted your battery you see all the red frame and stuff. Sheee no longer has any red, I tore it down and redid it and moved away from the red/white stock colors. 1987 Banshee Project <- theres a link to where I re-did stuff. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jbooker82 Posted June 9, 2010 Report Share Posted June 9, 2010 I run Piaa H6M's in both my Banshee and Raptor's stock lighs. They make a nice bright white light as well. By looking at your pics it looks like the LED head light is more of a Flood light than a beam. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pondtunes Posted June 9, 2010 Author Report Share Posted June 9, 2010 I run Piaa H6M's in both my Banshee and Raptor's stock lighs. They make a nice bright white light as well. By looking at your pics it looks like the LED head light is more of a Flood light than a beam. It is more of a flood pattern. I run mostly tight trails, so i like the spread I dare say they reach just as far as the stockers did though. I'll try to get some pics for comparison tonight, When I was out at buscoe there were lots of flat open areas and they did real well out there too. I was just really sick of the way the stock lights dimmed at idle and wasn't gonna go the high output stator route. Now I have light when I want it regardless of if the shee is running or not Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Snopczynski Posted June 9, 2010 Report Share Posted June 9, 2010 how much did it cost for parts to do the led headlights? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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