Rewiring the fj; LED headlight, heated grips, etc..

[fudge12]

So the other day I was doing some work on fudge, and I decided to make a project of it. Deep goal was to straighten the bent fairing subframe that held my windscreen crooked. Other goals were to finish wiring up the bike.
I did my standard wiring mods that I do to every bike; heated grips, gps, switched powerlet in the dash, unswitched powerlet in the side, headlight love, some LEDs.  Not done to this bike are upgraded horn wiring, yet anyway, or a voltage gauge. Pictured is my helper Tank. He's awesome.

[fudge12]

So when I bought the bike, it came with a story of having something having fallen on it in a garage. Lack of windscreen, busted and repaired mirror, and slightly tweaked bodywork supported the story. I've been avoiding pulling the fairing off because it's supposed to be a pain. I was wrong, a couple bolts, some screws, and off it came. I pulled the front subframe off, sandblasted it clean and rust free, and repainted it. I also wire brushed the front frame section to remove the surface rust and shot it all with rustoleum black, carefully chosen because it was what I had.

[fudge12]

Figuring I was in this deep, I may as well address the wiring and lights. One of my dash lights was out, meaning that every time I was driving more than 150 or so miles an hour at night I was experiencing the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. This caused a bit of a delay while I ordered the parts. First up was an LED H4 bulb.  Many of these are crap, but I've had good experiences with the three sided versions. The two sided ones don't seem to have enough aluminum for an effective heat sink, nor do they have enough light on the sides. This particular one uses two emitters for low, and adds a third for high beam.

[fudge12]

Installation is simple. Remove stock bulb. Insert adapter plate. Install OEM rubber surround. Install bulb, which is twist lock in the adapter. This particular one comes with a large heat sink, a cooling fan, and a separate LED driver module. Well technically it came with two of each since I had to buy a pair.

[fudge12]

I mounted the driver to an unused mount point behind the headlight. Now is a good time to mention that I disconnected and reconnected every electrical connector I had access to, and put dielectric grease on all the contacts. First try mounting the driver didn't work due to interference with the gauges so I had to flip it over.

[fudge12]

So the dash lights were replaced with 5 emitter LEDs of the cheap variety. I replaced all of them except the low oil and low fuel, because i couldn't be bipothered to figure out which was positive and which was negative, and LEDs are particular about that. All the others were just a matter of installing the bulb and if it didn't light up, turn it around. In the pic the neutral and speedo bulbs have been replaced, everything else is filament bulbs.

[fudge12]

Ok, to feed all of this I added some wires to the battery. 10g straight to the pos and neg, two on the pos. One on the + goes to a fuse, then a powerlet (with quick disco) on the right side panel. This one is used for heated gear when riding in the cold, and hooking my battery tender to when stopped. The other goes to a fuse, then a 40a relay.  The relay gets its coil power, 85 and 86, from the unused emissions connector under the tank. 87 goes to the +12v fused, and 30 splits into a pair of 10g wires, one running to the trunk and one runs along the OEM harness to the front. It then breaks out in 3 12g wires with shielded spade connectors.  One goes to the gps, one goes to the grips, one goes to the powerlet. In this application I'm reusing an old car gas which has traffic receiver built into the cig lighter plug, so I have a cig lighter socket wired in. That mess is wrapped in self-vulcanizing rubber. All these get their ground from a ground point I installed in the frame gusset.

[fudge12]

The heated grips are bikemasters, by far the best I've tried. Physical installation is as simple as cutting the old grips and mashing these on. They are a bit weird for the fj because the stock grips are longer than normal, and my throttle tube seems smaller diameter than normal but easily overcome with some included superglue. The controller I mounted on the left clipon, drilling and tapping an 8-32 hole because that was the size I had both a stainless countersunk screw and tap. Electrically it's a quick connector for each grip, one for the controller, and the 12v connections at my breakout wire. Anyone who rides where it's even occasionally less than 60*f (that's like -12*c or so) needs heated grips. Life is so much better with toasty mitts, and even wet hands are bearable if they're warm. Best part for me is being able to wear warm weather gloves on cool mornings with the heat, turn it off when it gets hot, then heat back on in the evening. Hell, I'm considering pulling the seat cover off again and adding a seat heater.
Forgot to mention, front powerlet is to run volts into a tank bag, or run heated gear for me while my passenger (daughter) uses the rear outlet for her heated gear.

[FJ1100mjk]

Nice job on your accessorizing and electrical upgrades to your bike. 

[fudge12]

Haven't ridden at night with the new headlight bulb, but I expect magnificence. Yes I've read the stories of inappropriate flux luminances and other awesome words. However, I've had LED headlights in my versys for over a year. Every light in my house, and barn, have been converted to LED. MY son's car came with LED headlights. Another son, who is an EE, installed LEDs in his car and showed me math way beyond my abilities to support the flux luminance superiorities, particularly when compared to a 30yo halogen. In short, they work and work well. I'm torn between keeping my extra LED H4 as a spare, or installing it in the blast, or just keeping it for the next bike. For the naysayers that worry about the durability of the cooling fan, again experience doesn't bear out the fragility. I ride my versys.  A lot. In all weather. Remember the big storms that ran up the east coast last September, causing the flooding and such?  That's when I went to the Dragon. Rode every day, rain or shine. Rode home racing the leading edge of the storm, pouring the whole way. Headlights still work fine. I'm also pretty convinced that the fan is unnecessary in a bike, as there's enough airflow around it to cool it. The light is crisp, white, and instant.  I may post pics of the beam pattern, but my phone is my primary camera and it truly fails to capture what the eye sees.  

[Pat Conlon]

Thanks for the write up!
Interesting on the 3 sided LED lamp you selected to use, do you have a link for more info on this bulb?

[fudge12]

No problem!  I used this one https://www.amazon.com/dp/B016KHJU16/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_tai_U472xbC2Z9HFE based on the three sides and external driver assembly, also on it being amazon prime so I could get it quickly. I have less confidence in the ones where the current driver is built into the bulb.  The kit says 80w, which is typical marketing misdirection, as that's the theoretical maximum of both bulbs running all their emitters.  Another key is the input voltage of 9-36v.  The stock wiring, as badly designed as it is, can easily handle 40w, which if it can only muster 9v is still only 4.4a.  Plus on low beam, which is what it does 99% of the time, it only runs 2 emitters which should equate to 26w, which is equivalent to a brake light.  Also note that the driver is digital, so if the volts/amps meet the minimum, the light is on at full brightness. Doing the headlight relay bypass would make no difference. If I had planned to go with a halogen bulb I absolutely would have installed a relay, but this just doesn't draw enough power to make it worth the hassle.

[fudge12]

Ok, for all y'all what like actual numbers instead of personal opinions:  I just pulled the bike off the charger and turned it to run for 5 minutes to let the battery stabilize. Measured directly at the terminals I got 12.21v.  Measured at the front powerlet I had 12.20v. Next I pulled the headlight fuse and measured the amperage running through it. Low beam was 2.20a and with the high beam it went to 2.68a, again with the bike off and running a 12.2v nominal, for 26.84 and 32.69 watts. A single brake light 1157 consumes 26w, so I call this a success. Important note, I'm less worried about babying the alternator and reducing load on it than I am about lightening the load on the stock wiring, and to a lesser extent freeing up electrons for the heated grips and vest.  
Side note, apologies for the spelling and weird words, I'm using my phone or tablet to take pics and it's easier to post them from there than to transfer to the computer.  The iPad is many things, but a touch typist's dream it isn't. 
Further side note.  Any replacement bulb that isn't a halogen H4 is going to have more glare and less focus than a halogen H4, in any housing that's designed for a halogen H4.  Light bulbs are designed and built to micron accuracy, and the section of wire coil which produces the actual light is as close to exactly in the correct place as makes no difference.  This means that housings are designed for a single light source (or two for an H4) of an exact size, diameter, length, and location within the housing.  Swapping it for an HID where the capsule is a different shape, size, and location than the stock bulb, or an LED which has multiple emitters, all of which are in different places and sizes than the stock coils, automatically means less control of the light produced.  The bulb may in fact make even more light than the H4, but it's likely that much of that light will be going where it shouldn't.  Choose carefully and try to get as close to the stock bulb as possible.  That's why I like the three sided bulbs, the high beam emitter is very close to stock location, and the two low beam emitters are very close to the same, not location, but emission profile, of the H4.  It was very noticeable in my Versys.  A two-emitter LED provided almost no usable light, and lots of glare, because the housing was designed to use a lot of the side light for illumination.  The single low beam emitter could only broadcast in a small arc, so most of it's higher lumens were wasted.  Switching to a three-sided LED let me broadcast to a much wider arc, which used more of the reflector, which produced much more light on the road where it matters instead of somewhere in the vicinity of the bulb where it doesn't. 

tl/dr:  Light on the ground is more important than light on the meter, and for this the bulb and housing must work in concert.  My dog Tank is awesome, and he knows it.

[Bob]

Very nice write up.  It can get to be a real rat's nest in there.
I found it handy to put all the fuses in one place...

[fudge12]

Usually if I go for more than the three or 4 accessories I go on eBay and pick up a fuse panel from a cbr600. They're cheap, reasonably small, and have 7 circuits. Of the 7, two feed from one input wire, 5 feed from another. This gives the ability to have both switched and unswitched in the same panel. Best part for me is that it looks like it belongs on the bike, because it came from a bike. My goal whenever I modify something is for it to look like Soichiro Honda put it there himself.