Today's foibles

[quazi-moto]

Welp, I had the stallion out for a run today and upon my return I noticed that the taillamp filament burned out. I think its a Philips 21W/5W bulb. Anyone else replace theirs yet? What's a suitable equivalent? I also noticed that the little red reflector on the right side broke off where it mounts behind the muffler bracket. Obviously, these aren't major issues, but after spending a buttload of money on a bike its kind of disconcerting to say the least. <_>

[jtucker]

> Welp, I had the stallion out for a run today and upon my return I noticed that the taillamp filament burned out. I think its a

>Philips 21W/5W bulb. Anyone else replace theirs yet? What's a suitable equivalent?

 

Interestingly, I haven't had to replace this yet on the Guzzi. I have once on the Ducati... may be the same type of bulb, but not sure. Some folks on the Monster list seeminly have to replace this bulb ever couple of months. Combined, I've got about 32K miles on my two bikes, and I've only had to replace one tail light bulb. I consdier myself lucky. Go to your local auto parts store and try to find the "Long Life (LL)" version of the same bulb. Funny how they sell a normal bulb and a Long Life bulb on the same rack... given the choice, who wants to buy a "short life" bulb? Oh... and it's probably a good idea to keep a spare stashed somewhere on the bike, because odds are, you will lose another at some point.

 

> I also noticed that the little red reflector on the right side broke off where it mounts behind the muffler bracket.

> Obviously, these aren't major issues, but after spending a buttload of money on a bike its kind of disconcerting

> to say the least.

 

That's just your bike trying to tell you, "get this goofy-looking thing off of me!" Seriously, though... they probably expect 99.9% of owners to remove these things before they even ride the bike home, so I doubt they waste too much energy designing them. My bike either never had them, or they were removed by my dealer during the pre-delivery setup because he knew full well I would yank them off and chuck them into the weeds somewhere.

 

__Jason

00 M900Dark

00 V11 Sport

[Guest v11eric]

Today, I replaced the bulb for the 3e time. Are there any "long life" bulb's??

that would be interesting, because I had the feeling I'm going to replace this bulb over and over and over..

 

So tell me all about longlife bulb's never heard of befor

 

Eric

01 V11 Lemans

[Guest IanJ]

At least in the US, you can get bulbs that are marketed as being longer life, marked LL after their model number (ie, 1024LL). Another choice, if you're spending a lot of time and effort replacing bulbs, is to get an LED-based replacement. I don't have the link right to hand, but someone is selling LED bulbs that use the regular mounting base for a standard bulb, but have 25 (or so) LEDs on them, arranged so about 2/3 point straight out, and 1/3 are arranged in a ring to point sideways out (to bounce off presumed reflectors). Looked pretty cool, but at $60 apiece, you'd have to know for sure you wanted them.

 

Here's the link: http://www.datasheets.led.net/auto_index/a.../auto_index.htm

[Guest jimjib]

Another trick I have heard about from harley guys...is to coat the metel part of the bulb and scocket with grease. I guess it kills some of the vibration that can break the filiment.

[dlaing]

before you rush out to buy the LED tail light, you might want to read this review:

http://webbikeworld.com/Motorcycle-technic...s/led/index.htm

Unfortunately all of the LED bulbs that I have seen are kind of uni-directional and almost none of the light reflects off of the mirrors. Perhaps with a different mirror or some sort of difussion it would work better. I am planning on making my own LED lamp. I tried making an LED bulb but it was too unidirectional even using "wide angle" LEDs. Back to the old drawing board...

[Guest jimjib]

Try the grease trick....its cheap.

[Guest v11eric]

I think I found a LL-type without nowing, It lasts already 2000km.

 

lights up

 

eric 01 V11 Lemans

[al_roethlisberger]

Reflectors and lenses for LED applications are quite different than for incandescent bulbs. As mentioned, LED don't have much off-axis visibility, so a reflector and lens has to be designed to accomodate that. In every case where I have replaced incandescent bulbs with LEDs, the result was that the LEDs were a bit brighter/redder sometimes "on-axis", but they were *always* less bright and visible from the side. Unless you make some modifications to the lens and reflector of a light fixture designed for incandescents, you will have this issue with the current crop of LED replacements.

 

Another side effect to be aware of is when one replaces all the indicator lights with LEDS, they often will no longer flash at the appropriate speed. Generally because of the much lower impedence of the LEDs, the flasher will flash much more quickly... quite annoyingly actually(although fully electronic units like the Signalminder are unaffected).

 

For a lot more info on this, there are several long discussions on the FZ-1(Fazer1000) Owners Assoc forum on EZBoard. There is a fella there that did a lot of research into which flashers will replace the OEM units, and support LEDs. He also has spent about a year with various prototypes to build an enclosure, reflector, and lens that will make the LED replacements have the same off-axis visibility as the OEM units. Interesting reading, that illustrates that a true LED replacement is no trivial or inexpensive task.

 

I just stick with the bulbs... as LEDs do "burn out" all the time. It's just not the same cause.

 

al