Super-serious riders and racers generally don't approve of adding lights to a bike. But if you're not that deadly serious, and can be open to having a little fun, then think about adding some cool lighting effects to the bike.
If you've never done any wiring, don't worry. There's not much to know - a light will light as long as it has a connection to +12V and to ground.
You can play around by using an extra battery, some spare wire, and a few LEDs or incandescent bulbs. Once you realize that you can do just about anything you want with lights, with little effort, you can go crazy with them - as I admittedly have. Below I'll give you a few ideas to get you started in this, my favorite area of madness.
There are lots of places on the web where you can buy "1157 LED replacement bulbs". But watch out - they are not all the same, not by a long shot. The big weakness of LEDs is that they are not bright, so your first concern is to get your bulbs s bright as possible. There are two things you can research, when looking for LED replacement bulbs:
When you're looking for tail light LED bulbs, you need to know that you want 1157 replacement bulbs. This just means that they act as "dual filament" standard bulbs would: 1/2 bright for tail light function, full brightness for brake light. When you're shopping, you can always tell an 1157 bulb because it will have two nubs on it, staggered at different heights. An 1156 bulb, in contrast, has two nubs on the cylinder, but they are placed at the same height. These bulbs act as single filament lights - either on or off, as you might want for a side marker light.
I bought a series of 1157 LED replacement bulbs for my Mototeck undertail, and after much trial and error I found these bulbs from Superbrightleds.com. They contain 19 LEDs, at 8300 mcd each, for about $7 each. You'll not find a better deal than that. And they have different bulbs available with 24- and 30-LED clusters. Be aware that as you add more LEDs, though, the size of the bulb increases, and might not fit into all undertails.
Here is a comparison. The light on the right is by Signal Dynamics, 10 LEDs per bulb, which cost me $25 each. On the left is a bulb from Superbrightleds.com, with 19 LEDs, which cost $7. It's difficult for a camera to capture the huge difference in brightness, but this picture makes it obvious that the Superbrightleds.com© is the better choice. Definitely go there first if you're shopping for bulbs.
You can get load resistors or and electronic flasher there too - to prevent a flash-too-fast problem, which occurs when you replace incandescent bulbs with LED bulbs.
You can count the 19 LEDs contained in each Superbright lamp. They are also angled in slightly different directions to increase the visibility from different angles of view. The size is still small enough to fit behind my Mototeck tail light covers. They really are no larger than the AWFUL LEDs that came with the undertail, nor are they larger than the Signal Dynamics lights. Dimensions are 1 inch diamter, by 1-3/4 inch overall length, so there will be no problems fitting them into your light housings.
There's no room for an exhaustive introduction to LEDs here, especially since there are so many other electronics web pages that have done this so well. For example, the Electronics Club web page will tell you all you need to know to get started. In case their site goes belly-up, you can download a pdf version of their LED page.
A few key reminders, however, are below.
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| The cathode is the "negative" terminal, and always has the shorter lead. That's the end you'll connect to the ground terminal of the power source. | You can also tell the cathode (negative pole) because it will have a flattened area when viewed head-on. |
 | When connecting an LED, or a group of LED's, you need to add a resistor before the LEDs, as shown. This will give a required voltage drop, so that your LEDs don't pop. When calculating your resistor value, use 14.5 Volts as your supply voltage - since that is the true output voltage of the bike's generator. |
To calculate the proper resistor value, download my resistor calculator spreadsheet. You must have Microsoft© Excel installed on your computer for this to work., but you don't have to understand anything about the program nor spreadsheets --- just enter the specs of your LEDs in the yellow boxes, hit "ENTER", and the answer will come up in the blue box. I called this the "PU-235 LED Resistor Modulator" program, in honor of my favorite scientist, Marvin the Martian.
Once you start hooking up lights, especially LEDs, there's really no end to the insanity. Here are a few other projects I've done
I put these amber LEDs in the RAM air tubes. It's a nice little project for the winter. Just to be tricky, I wired them with a relay to be on all the time, but then flash on either side if the turn signal is activated. In the day time, these are not very noticeable, but at night, it is a nice effect.
I found these cheapy neons at Wally World. So just for a kick, I mounted them in the RAM air tubes as well. They make a cool effect - of course just for showing off.
Various versions of these have come and gone over the years: these are actually Neopods©, which I bought from Kuryaken. They went belly up after a while, and a similar product Zaplights© appeared for a little while. As far as I can tell, they've gone the way of the dinosaurs also. You might try looking for either name in an internet search, if interested.
The attraction to these type of lights is that they can give you that cool neon glow, without having to install long rigid neon tubes and their associated hardware, which can be quite bulky. LEDs like this are also impossible to break. And they are much less expensive than good quality neons. Take a look and see if you might be interested. I'll post up a link if I can find any recent seller who is offereing these.
Click to enlarge photos.
Here is what's available for now. But these LED product seem to come and go like the wind. So don't be surprised it the links here go dead. Remember, my pictures above were done with Neopods. I can't vouch for any other lighting products, because I have not used them. But if I can find any products that look similar, I'll link them below:
LED bulbs vs incandescent
If you have an older bike, as I did, that comes with regular incandescent light bulbs, there's really no reason to change them. In reality, a $2 incandescent bulb (21 Watts ) which comes stock on the older GSXRs is always going to be brighter than any LED will. If you just want safety, then stay with your stock bulbs, and save your money for a more worthhwile mod!
Why do people change their 1157 bulbs to LEDs?
Do not change to LED lights because you think they'll be brighter. You will be sorely disappointed. You'll be paying 25X more, for lights that are nowhere near as bright. But if you installed an undertail meant to have LED brake lights, then the wiring will be very small gauge, and you cannot just plug in a 21W incandescent bulb or you'll melt the wiring. In that case, you're stuck with getting LED bulbs. Just watch out, because it's easy to get lousy LED bulbs.
Also, an LED bulb has a very limited viewable angle. This means that you can see the light very brightly if you are directly behind the light (zero degrees). But as you move to either side, the light rapidly fades, until at 30-degrees away from center, it's really not noticeable at all. This means there is only a 60° total viewable angle wherein the light is very visible. Consider the diagram above
This is the best reason never to replace turn signals with LED lights--- because this is a place where you want all drivers in all directions to be able to see your lights, and that won't happen with LEDs. LED tail (brake) lights can be safe if they are bright enough, because you only need the guy directly behind you to know that you're stopping.
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