Some tips on adding lights

[Freebird]

LIGHTS LIGHTS AND MORE LIGHTS

 

It seems that every time we buy some thing new for our venture it has a light or two attached or needs 12V power to run it, and the alternator can only give so much to keep up with our demands for more power. The alternator can produce between 20 and 24.5 amps and after taking away the 10-12 amps needed for the normal operation of the bike you have about 10 amps to work with. Now when you add a trailer you tax the system even more because most trailer lights take about 2.5 amps for running lights and 5-6 amps when the brake lights come on. That doesn't leave much left for the rest of the goodies we have installed that use power so it would seem we have a problem? NO PROBLEM, it only means we need a power manager and the simplest is to have all of the lights we have installed on one or more switches so we can turn them off when there not needed. Speaking of installing lights, trailer or a sidecar the following are some tips on the best place I have found to hook up to power.

 

Lights

For lights; any convenient brown wire will supply 12V switched on by the key, but if you also wish use a power bus to supply all of the extra lights you have added, then use the large brown wire coming from the Ignition. switch and be sure to add a 15-20A fuse because this wire comes directly from the main fuse through the Ignition. switch. Then use this source to power all of the switches to control your lights.

 

Trailers

Trailers are a different story because your brake lights and tail lights are monitored by the computer and if they are hocked up wrong they can damage the sensor board in the computer. the safest place to attach trailer lights is at the rear brake switch using the brown wire for the running lights and the yellow wire for stop lights. For turn signal lights you can connect directly to the dark green wire at the right turn light and the chocolate wire for the left turn light. For those of us that all ready have trailers and extra lights it might be a good idea to check on the wiring to see that it was done the safe way.

 

Relays

 

I have found all sorts of uses for relays on my Venture, the following is a setup I use on my 91. The relays are from Radio Shack and are for circuit board mounting, they will carry 10 Amps and only require 160 ma to operate the coil. The wiring is straight forward "NO" is the normally open contacts, Com its the wiper or moving contact, the coil has no polarity, #5 is Bat - Frame or black wire; #10 is bat + and I used a 15 amp fuse on this wire; and for the sake of the explanation I will give the rest of the wires a function, #1 wire is connected to the brake light and # 9 wire goes to the trailer stop lamps; # 2 wire is connected to the tail light and # 8 goes to the trailer running lights, #3 wire is connected to the right turn signal and # 7 wire goes to the trailer right turn light, # 4 wire is connected to the left turn signal and # 6 wire goes to the trailer left turn light. You my ask why go to the trouble to have a relay on the flashers; Well their are two reasons #1 when you connect your trailer flashers directly to the bike you load the system and the flashers go to fast, # 2 all of the lights on the trailer are brighter because their running on full voltage. Also if something shorts out on the trailer you don't loose a fuse on the bike. I used 18 ga wire on # 5 and # 10 and 20 ga wire on the rest. The computer monitor costs over $900.00 at a dealer. http://www.venturerider.org/pictures/4relay.gif

Fred Vogt

1037

[juggler]

Darn good tips. I'll be refering to this tonight or tomorrow when I add more lights.

[RSV Angel]

Another good thing to do is to use the led lights whenever possible since they draw a lot less current that standard lights.

Juggler you really need more lights!