Headlight for scooter By tember1214 (Read 392 times)

[tember1214]

My wildfire r8 does not have a headlight so obviously I haven't been riding at night. I'd like to though. Anyone know of a good universal headlight? And how do you hook them up?

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[Bashan]

You mean the bulb is burnt out? It's got to have a headlight, it is DOT mandated. So do you want to mount a light on the body or replace what's in the bike or what? Depending on what you want I can tell you how to wire it, I've did several. Rich

[tember1214]

I have no headlight at all!! Bought this thing on craigslist and wow it was a mess when I got it. Running great now but I need a good headlight assembly cause I can't find one for a wildfire r8 unless it's directly from company but they never answer the phone (you have to call to order). So I need one I can mount on scooter

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[Bashan]

Well there's these:

The above are LEDs and are inexpensive, easy to mount, and are a low power draw. They may not be bright enough for your needs but you could mount four if need be.

Then there's this:

I got it at Tractor Supply. Inexpensive, very bright, but an electrical resource hog. Or you could do both. There are more lights available at even Wally World. Go find what you want but before you buy get the stats off of the box and I'll tell you if your bike can handle that much draw or not. Rich

[tember1214]

OK so I looked at Walmart and found some LEDs. All they said on them was it was for a 12v system. Comes with pre terminalized wiring harness and illuminated rocker switch.

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[Bashan]

OK we're going LED. Sometimes they draw so little voltage they don't list the amps. Just be aware they might not be as bright at night as you want. If not we can add more lights but it's a place to start. But LED's don't waste a lot of energy, they convert electricity to light and don't have a great deal of heat by-product like filament bulbs.

LEDs are directional in that they are lit continuously with DC. With AC they shut off while the current flows in the "wrong" direction so they would be half as efficient on AC. Therefore, you want to hook them to your battery. You should have a red lead and a black lead from the light...hook them to the appropriate battery terminal. If there are more than two lights on one switch, and it's not prewired, run them in parallel. That would be like the diagram:

Don't hook the end of one circuit into the end of the other....that's series. Fuse? These draw so little power I wouldn't fuse them. The only thing you could be worried about is an accidental short, not an overdraw. So I guess you could do an inline fuse at say 3 amps. If the bare positive touched ground it would pop no problem. You could also ground right to frame rather than run a direct ground to battery but from what I've read you can get some AC interference from the yellow wire. So I would just run a ground right next to the positive and it doesn't have to be two separate grounds back to the battery, you can combine into one wire just like the red to the switch. You can even use the ground as the switch wire rather than the red if you want. Rich

[tember1214]

Awesome thank you!! Gonna pick these up and try them out for $24. Hopefully they mount on correctly or I'll just have to get creative

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[richardv]

If you intend on using the scoot on the public roads those will not be legal. I'm sure Officer Smiley will be glad to discuss this with you. And don't expect a lot of useful light for that price.

[Bashan]

The V is correct, LEDs are not legal for headlights and I've mentioned that many times. But what I was thinking Richard was that NOT having a MC headlight is also illegal. I've talked to cops around here and they said they wouldn't mess with somebody with an LED bike headlight but would probably stop one with no headlight. I also warned him that it may not be bright enough and we would have to add more lights if that was the case. At the worst he's got a couple of cool running lights. Rich

[tember1214]

Yes I've been driving around with no headlight forever. Even passed cops. They don't much care around here. Led should work OK for me

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