Howdo!! Just fitted one of those battery LED's to my Superlight, wired in to the fuse box & earthed to a dash stud. Works a treat. Pablo
Howdo! Stuck a few on me 'Water cooled' thread, can take some more detailed ones tomorrow if you want. Not ridden the bike because I'm a bit of a leg iron at the mo so not sure how a constant green light would bug me?? Fitted and wired in within a hour - happy days. Pablo
Howdo! Here's a quick pic of the back of the fuse holder. If it works okay then I shall wire it correctly in to the loom so it's all nice n tidy, instead of the current configuration. This pic highlights the 2 yellow strips, to removed the connector from the fuse holder I had to pull this up and then press down on a clip to allow removal. Not sure if these are on the older 2valve fuse holders? And here's where I stuck the LED. Pablo
I reckon by the time you notice the oil has got too hot the damage is done........a falling off of oil pressure might be seen quicker......or maybe it's six of one and half a dozen of the other........But what it means is that a gauge has to be watched, so is that a distraction anyway? AL
Modern oils would hold out at hi-temp anyway (just changed to Motul 5100 10w-50, but thats another subject...), personally I wouldnt be keen to have another guage to watch? The air-cooled motors run hot/cold/very hot anyways, no sense giving yourself another dial/light to panic/stress over.
When I was racing cars.....(which admittedly was quite a while ago).......the most important gauge was the oil pressure gauge, because an oil temp gauge doesn't tell you if you if the pressure has dropped perhaps by losing oil from a leak. The temp gauge just tells you that the oil has got hot for any number of reasons; like oil leak; oil pump failure; oilway blockage; filter blockage etc etc; whereas a pressure gauge will register all of those either by a loss of pressure or an increase in pressure. To quickly see if there was a problem at a glance, the dodge was to have all gauges turned so that the needle was always vertical when everything was running 'normal', that way any deviation off the vertical position indicated a problem. But I agree, too many gauges are a distraction. AL.
Could you run a gauge off the oil pressure light feed? Just remembered we already have a low oil pressure warning, lol
Yup.......you could even retain the low pressure light as well, with a suitable tee-piece to take the switch and the sender for the gauge......done it on Fords, Minis and one or two other cars....Just confirm that the gauge is suitable for the pressure range. Also, watch out for the thread sizes....you don't want loads of adaptors and a tee-piece.......otherwise you will half half a mile of brass sticking out the engine. AL.
Reading this thread I ordered a 5mm 3 colour led battery monitor from Gammatronix Ltd Electronics Store on ebay. Ordered yesterday morning arrived today. Fitted this evening, seems to do what it says on the tin . Will source a relay to switch it on and off via the ignition as it's always on as I have it at present. Thanks for the good thread chaps.
Howdo!! Where have you wired in the LED? You can fit it without the need for a relay and only comes on with the ignition. Fed from you fusebox on the start(Ignition side) should do it. Cheers Pablo
If you 'feed' the monitor off the Ignition side of the fuse box, you are measuring any load applied by the rest of the electrical equipment........for it to be proper accurate, it should be fed by a heavy supply that isn't interupted by any other load.......or in other words, direct to the battery.......to do that so that it is off when the ignition is off, you have to use a relay. Incidentally.......for cars etc, it is not recommended to install an ammeter anywhere in the circuit where it could be affected by the starter circuit......not saying the monitor is an ammeter, but I guess the theory applies. AL
Currently wired with positive to the battery and negative to an earth on the clocks. Will probably go the relay route as already ordered Went for a run today, it seems to work well. Brian
I agree if you measure across the battery that's what your gonna get but as you mentioned you are measuring any load applied by the rest of the electrical equipment, so you will have the same load when you come to start the bike. As this is only a visual indication of a (ballpark) voltage & not as you mentioned again an ammeter I believe going across the battery is not really important as any electrical load that is present at the indication will be present during starting, and your interested in the voltage available to start the bike with all loads. Cheers Pablo
When you start the engine, there is a surge.....so any electrical instrument is at risk if it is connected via the ignition/starter circuit. Regarding load, check out Birdie's post No.3 in this thread. Both are good reasons to use a relay. AL.
Yep read Birdies post beforehand. He mentioned with the LED located of the horn side of the circuit, bike running and lights on there was enough voltage drop to cause the LED to go amber. Which would indicate a voltage of > 12.45volts according to the LED. So then fitted across the battery I guess which it indicated Green (>13.2volts Charging ) The bike is running so therefore under charge from the alternator so voltage should remain fairly constant? Before fitting the LED to my bike I checked readings from the fuse box against the battery, both where in the same ball park, the additional load of lights rose proportionally at each place. I also checked voltages as revs rose and IMO all seemed good. I wanted the LED to be on as soon as I turned the ignition key so that I good monitor for over voltage of 14.2volts(Alternator short/problem with reg/rect) due to running a Lifepo4 battery. Don't get me wrong with running a relay and taking the feed of the battery and I agree with the statement all equipment is at risk to surging. The LED circuit does have an overload protection. I didn't experience the voltage variants that birdie did and I utilised the best route for my circumstance. Just for reference the LED monitors the following: >14.2v -Green/Amber alternating (Over voltage) This is my required threshold >13.2v - Green (Charging) >12.45v - Amber >12.25v - Red slow flashing >12.0v - Red 2 flashes repeat >11.8v - Red 3 flashes repeat Pablo
