LED headlight battery

[dmfaulks85]

Has anyone used a lithium ion battery pack to power an LED headlight? If so, what did you use?

[effort=results]

Ive seen guys use drill battery packs

[f76]

What trike is this for? Converting an ac voltage trike to dc voltage is not difficult. I've done it to both my 350x and 200x using a large capacitor and battery, respectively. I run the same LED light bar on both machines and like the setup.

[dmfaulks85]

Thanks guys, I bought this one. It's for my 84' R, I wanted to have a really bright headlight and I don't want to deal with the light being dimmer when the engine is at idle. I want a constant brightness all of the time.

[ps2fixer]

Thanks guys, I bought this one. It's for my 84' R, I wanted to have a really bright headlight and I don't want to deal with the light being dimmer when the engine is at idle. I want a constant brightness all of the time.

A battery + regulator would solve your problem if the high rev brightness is good enough for you. With an LED, you will still need to filter the power to DC via regulator, and a battery/cap to keep the voltage while at idle or you risk damaging the LED's from under voltage depending on their specs.

I don't really follow the post that is up a few, basic math is the # of amps draw / ah rating of the battery. So say the LED light is 30w @ 12v = 2.5 amps, for 3 hours run time you need 7.5ah battery, or if you only need 1 hour per charge, then 2.5ah would be fine. You size the battery to the load. Lithium Ion are designed for quick or slow discharge, does not matter, charging them is similar. Lead Acid that the trikes use are short term high amp design, and like being charged slowly. Drill batteries almost all use Lithium Ion now, older ones used NiCa, which has a flaw of the memory effect, but is a deep cycle design like the Lithium Ion.

Anyway, the above is kind of not needed since you're powering it off your machine's alternator, you will just need a small cheap battery and a regulator to make the system work well.

[jeswinehart]

Why don't you hook it up and try it, it is only drawing a fraction of the stock headlight bulb

It may not dim at all at idle.

[ps2fixer]

Why don't you hook it up and try it, it is only drawing a fraction of the stock headlight bulb

It may not dim at all at idle.

From my understanding, lower load = higher voltage. Just for an example, if you unhook the headlight from a 250r, the tail light will blow due to too high of a voltage. With the LED light being 36w vs factory headlight being 60w, I don't know if the voltage will be too high or not at high rev. Most LED lights I have seen work from 10v-40v, sometimes they only go up to 24v though, and purely resister designed lights are designed for the 13.6v like a car would put out.

I don't claim to be an expert on these, but I have burned out LED headlights before, don't use a battery charger to power them, they do not like it!

[ps2fixer]

I see, the way I read it, it made it sound like you were taking lumans into account in the power usage instead of just the light output. I always viewed the lumans vs power usage as just how efficient the LED/Driver was, of course if more light is needed, more lumans is what is needed, and generally it sucks more power.

I won't go into too many details, but I have 80% of the supplies to go off grid, so LED light is something I'll be using, but I'll be building the lights to my needs such as low light at night to save battery power and to be somewhat of a night light vs running 100%. A side effect is longer LED life, cooler operation, and higher efficiency of power used vs light output. Simply put, 3w led running at 1w is more efficient than a 1w given the same grade/manufacture of LED, aka the 3w @ 1w draw would give out more light.

I must have missed the link when I read though the post, but wow is that little light expensive. 95% efficient driver is very good though, most are 80-90% last time I researched them.

[dmfaulks85]

I think I'm going to hook it up to my drill battery and see how long it lasts. And if it doesn't last long enough for me I'll wire it into my wheeler.

[ps2fixer]

If you can find a rating on the battery for ah (amp hours), we can estimate how long it will work. Just a quick example, 3ah @ 14v and the led light using 36w should last around 1 hour 10 mins.

[jb2wheels]

I run my LEDs off the stock lighting coil.
You should use a regulator if your trike doesn't have one.
Since the 3rrd gen R and the 350X have a voltage regulator, I just plugged the LEDs in.
On the T3 and 70s I added a generic 2-wire regulator.

They work great. They do flicker at low idle but they're never dim.

If you want a battery - maybe try an RC car battery? They're cheap and small. You could carry a spare for a long ride. Charge them in the truck.

[jeswinehart]

I can vouch for Tecate needing some kind of voltage regulator.
I burnt up a old school vintage 2 stroke tach when I wired in direct.
Tecate mags produce about 7 volt at idle and jump to 18+ volts at 9k rpm.