There's a night section in the Paddy Dakar and last September we found ourselves riding around a mountain in the dark looking for tiny 1" x 2" metal plaques.
The headlight on the KLR is super bright, but it's limited in it's aim by how far you can turn the bars while stationary. This isn't ideal.
At the time it occurred to me that it would be wonderful to have a lamp of similar brightness to the headlight, but mounted on my helmet so that there would be good illumination wherever I was looking.
What you see here is the culmination of that thought process.
The stock headlamp bulb on the KLR was a 50/55 Watt so the alternator is good for at least that. In addition, it had to power the stop/tail bulb, the indicator bulbs, licence plate bulb and the various bulbs in the instrument cluster.
My KLR doesn't have any of that stuff any more due to advances in LED technology over the last few years. The LED headlight is 35 Watt and the LED parking lamp and the LED stop/tail bulb draw 1 Watt each!
It also has a GPS now - I don't know what kind of power that draws, but I guess its only a couple of Watts.
The point is, there should still be capacity to power an additional 15 Watt LED cluster mounted on a helmet.
The short term plan is to test it out over the winter by simply plugging it into a wiring harness on the bike. But for the Paddy Dakar next year I'll probably run it off a second battery in my backpack so I can walk around away from the bike (there's a good bit of thrashing around searching for the markers). I'll plug the second battery into the wiring harness to keep it charged while I'm on the bike.
I went riding today with the lamp mounted on the peak of my helmet and instantly forgot it was there. It doesn't weigh very much and it's fairly low profile - about 50mm tall and 150 wide. I didn't have it wired up, but I often ride with an electric heated jacket plugged into the bike, so I don't think the wiring will be an issue.
So it looks like it might actually work quite well...
Images Mercenary Garage
#NightRider #NightRaid #NightRally #LEDBulbs #PaddyDakar #KLR #KawasakiKLR #KLR250 #StealthKLR #Mercenary #MercenaryGarage
The headlight on the KLR is super bright, but it's limited in it's aim by how far you can turn the bars while stationary. This isn't ideal.
At the time it occurred to me that it would be wonderful to have a lamp of similar brightness to the headlight, but mounted on my helmet so that there would be good illumination wherever I was looking.
What you see here is the culmination of that thought process.
The stock headlamp bulb on the KLR was a 50/55 Watt so the alternator is good for at least that. In addition, it had to power the stop/tail bulb, the indicator bulbs, licence plate bulb and the various bulbs in the instrument cluster.
My KLR doesn't have any of that stuff any more due to advances in LED technology over the last few years. The LED headlight is 35 Watt and the LED parking lamp and the LED stop/tail bulb draw 1 Watt each!
It also has a GPS now - I don't know what kind of power that draws, but I guess its only a couple of Watts.
The point is, there should still be capacity to power an additional 15 Watt LED cluster mounted on a helmet.
The short term plan is to test it out over the winter by simply plugging it into a wiring harness on the bike. But for the Paddy Dakar next year I'll probably run it off a second battery in my backpack so I can walk around away from the bike (there's a good bit of thrashing around searching for the markers). I'll plug the second battery into the wiring harness to keep it charged while I'm on the bike.
I went riding today with the lamp mounted on the peak of my helmet and instantly forgot it was there. It doesn't weigh very much and it's fairly low profile - about 50mm tall and 150 wide. I didn't have it wired up, but I often ride with an electric heated jacket plugged into the bike, so I don't think the wiring will be an issue.
So it looks like it might actually work quite well...
Images Mercenary Garage
#NightRider #NightRaid #NightRally #LEDBulbs #PaddyDakar #KLR #KawasakiKLR #KLR250 #StealthKLR #Mercenary #MercenaryGarage
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