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The less electricity your bike eats on a regular basis the better your batteries life will be, as constant charging and discharging will buckle the plates and then you have a dead battery. If you can kick start your bike so much the better, your battery life will be long, if you need one at all. But if you have a big engine you may well find that you can not kick it over as the compression is so high, and electric start is your only option. So if your battery dies somewhere on a run and you can't kick it or jump start it then what are you going to do? Remember that cheep batteries suck! Modern led lighting etc will save some juice.
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| Number plate bolt lights. | |
| You have to have bolts for your number plate so you may as well have them lit up, or even use as extra break lights. And who knows they may even blind speed cameras. |
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| Tach sender: YANMAR PART NUMBER 128170-91160 | |
| This is a Yanmar rev counter sender, the threaded end screws on to a pipe that has teed off the fuel line on it's way to the injector. The other end has a spade connector to connect to a tachometer (rev counter), this went on ebay for £16. |
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| Rev counter: Tiny Tach: | |
| This is the easy way to get a rev counter on your bike, attach on wire to earth and the sender to the fuel line and that's it. The other way is to use an old dial type rev counter and attach a cable to a gearbox and attach the rev gearbox to the camshaft.......I don't think so. This little gizmo is way easier and will probably look better as well. |
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| Headlight: Bates 6 inch: Sourced 9-7-05 from eBay £28 inc del. | Harley Davidson: 27-8-05 from eBay £21inc del | ||
| Not everything works well off eBay, as soon as I plugged this in and switched it on it burned out both coils. It was also made for the American roads which meant the light beam would be going to the right. |
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So I bought a Harley Davidson sportster head light, at least I know this has been on the road and not a cheep Chinese import. When buying get one with E4 on the glass this means UK and don't buy a sealed beam as you can't change the bulb if it blows. |
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| Parking light: Aftermarket: 10-2-06 eBay £6.99 | Led tail/stop light: Hein Gericke 01-04-06 Shop £29.99 | ||
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It may seem that I'm going over the top here but this led parking light is only 0.1 watt as apposed to the 4 watt of a standard bulb. It will not burn out and it is anti vibration. Now fitted and working after modding my Harley light switch, it looks really good as it gives off a dull blue light. |
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Normal tail bulbs are 21 watt & 5 watt break light, led's are only 1 watt. That's a massive saving on power. Together with the led indicators that's a saving of 60 watts. And with a led parking light in the head light, you can run the lights all day and not worry about the state of the battery. |
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| Indicator flsher: Led: Sourced from eBay £6.90 | Led indicators: Aftermarket: 04-12-05 Shop £23.98 | ||
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Using a led flasher relay is the only real way to get led indicators working properly. If you use a normal old flasher relay the led's will flash way too fast or just stay on. You can use a normal old relay if you use a resistor at each indicator, but this has problems, they get hot and they still use 21 watt's as apposed to 2 watt's with the led flasher relay. The flasher in the picture was crap and I had to buy a £20 job from my local bike shop, I thought it was a bit cheap. |
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All 4 for £23.98 it pays to shop around. I chose led lights as it will save a lot of power, which is good for short term and long term battery life. Each indicator is only 1 watt, as apposed to bulb indicators 21 watt. If I use a 2 watt flasher relay then that's a 40 watt saving. |
