MOPED ARMY

There are tons of 1156 LED bulbs out there with the right bayonet mount for moped headlights. There is not a ton of 1156 bulbs that actually PROJECT light effectively onto the road given the angle of moped headlight housing. After experimenting, I ultimately went back to an incandescent for the headlight. The regular bulbs are cheap and last forever. Very interested to see whether this bulb actually projects as well as a regular light would.

...just an update. apologies to anyone who tried the bulb above. I didn't realize how bad it was until I used an improvement. It is Home Depot sku 1002 631 975.

620 lumens, 7.5watts, 3000K color. 35 degree spread. 9 bucks each.

The spread is important. A full 180 degree spread puts almost nothing down the road to see with. 35 degrees is quite nice with 620 lumens. My Newport stock magneto runs two bulbs just perfectly. At idle it dims a bit and has very slight blinking. The MR16 bulbs have all the internal circuitry necessary to take the ragged 3 to 18 volts ac coming straight off of the Magneto and smooth, rectify, and regulate it for the LED inside. I've run these for six months of daily use and they are appear to me to be as healthy as when I installed them.

Next spring/summer, unless something better is on the market, an updated version of these from Philips that is 720 lumens, 7.5 watts, 3300K (slightly whiter which would be nice) and 25 degrees of spread to put more light down the road.

Stop torturing yourself!! Go down the rabbit hole with me to a secret world of linear electron travel a long step away from it's inherent wave nature.

And please follow this proven by the clutz of the century --me in this best way learned is always the hard way. All substitutions are on you.

1. Known 50- 60 watts electric coil that can be or better is FLOATED .

2. Two floated ends to five wire volt reg/ rectifier ONLY TRAILTECH do not substitute unless u know equivalence or better. The DC out ( one of the five wires isn't really moped critical ) and the output to quality led.

3. Headlight is definitely Larson lighting. I can't find a even vaguely quality build. But make sure you follow the polarity perfectly

4. #3 means no frame ground for anything but the ignition coil. So yea u better understand and get what's needed for a decent loom or if careful mod of existing wiring. A recent poster told me using a combo of existing 40 yo loom and new jumps for 12 v dc when maybe it was 6 v ac is gonna fry the coil. So far so good. Led wiring dc can be a bit smaller gauge esp to other than the 35 w DC headlight which is quite bright.

5. The original brake light is now led require NOT using power off backside of ignition coil unless u possess advanced degrees in theoretical physics, the brake switches need change to reverse and because lack of frame ground, yup more freaking wires near ur controls to be unable to hide.

But the light is fabulous. I couldn't get enough from halogens or mult hone made LEDs to survive though my Magnum has still a chinese led with a ballast grafted into a cev 6 v light with the oem guts removed and the led with it's own fan is mounted. That's the five wire trailtech and the general smoothnees of it's amazing build keeps it working whereas on my vespa s with more vibration from that motor is quite prone to poof I'm permanently dead quickly.

I looked at the Larson catalog the other day and they seem most promising. The reflector is engineered to house multiple LED's which is what you want. The price seems very reasonable as well. The non-DOT compliant one piqued my interest in particular.

That's probably because 700 lumen isn't very bright. A HID is over 2000.

The difference is the light source. A halogen or HID emits light from almost 360 degrees where LED's are flat and therefore it's about 180 degrees. It's much harder to culminate.

...LED's are flat and therefore it's about 180

The white-lab-coated engineers at Philips have taken care of all that for you in the reflector and lens design of each MR16.

A modern well engineered road light does have a more elliptical than round pattern when shone on a garage door (for instance). Keeps more light where it should be and out of oncoming eyes. But the old lens in an 82 puch moped isn't really much improved on a bare round reflector in that regard so the MR16 is a reasonable replacement. I just like these cause theyre straight drop in, low cost, and available off the shelf from any hardware store if you need one on the road.

Why doesnt anybody post pictures so we can SEE?

Ok when it's.dsrk and i.have time I'll show u what Larsen lights do. Usually kind of lazy when dark and it's going to storm next few days ( powder days later this week )

This thread is great without any pics!

Thanks brad for posting an alternative to the ideas that have already been discussed.

Never hurts to have more options and if you haven't tried it why knock it? You can do almost anything with lighting and have it be better than stock 6v garbage moped headlights.

if you pop it inside a reflector and its looking too bright, or the pattern should be adjusted up, you can always make a cutoff like modern projection beam lights have, out of a beer can or something, and pop it in there.

the part about this being self regulated is sweet. I used one of these halogen outdoor lighting bulbs years ago and it didn't like the vibrations and high voltage, died super fast but was bright for the week or so it lasted

Thats bright!!! If you cpuld make a step by step tutorial with pictures, thatd be amazing..especially since electricity is not my forte....

http://www.mopedarmy.com/forums/read.php?1,4148767,4152422#msg-4152422

just to make it easier to be lazy...

So yes and no. The LEDs that u replace your incandescent 120 v bulbs rectify to 12 v. The old school track lighting such a lightoleer etc have a transformer that drops to 12 v but I believe that is also ac. But now if you go to the landscape garden section of ace or home Depot there have recently arrived what appears to be 12 v ac rectified to 12 DC LEDs with the two prongs that fit in all the above applications. But as to what they look like in a headlight I would say try and report back.

Yes if the above bulbs work and have a.decent path it could be good. The thingie with led lights other than the gigantic emmiters on work lights , I think an array is necessary to give great illumination.

Appears to be the most ideal spec to try on my Newport.

https://www.bulbsdepot.com/457523.html

I'll mount a pair. Maybe even a DPDT on-off-on for single/dual choice. 4000k is whiter than my current 3000. 710 lumens is brighter than my 620. 25 degree spot will throw more of that brighter whiter light down the road than my 35 degree current one.

I wonder if I had such good luck running these for a year is that the relatively huge heat sink (for the form size) hanging out in the breeze ahead of a 30mph bike for most of its working life keeps it much cooler than it was even engineered for.

I will honestly try to post a few pics of the road this spring (edited)