Last fall after following my wife (she on the scoot, me in the car) to a friends house in the evening, I decided that something had to be done to make our little LX50 more visible. I could barely see the tailight as it was, and against oncoming traffic, she all but disappeared. As I was commuting home in the evenings, I wanted to make sure I could be seen. The excellent bullet light project listed here wasn't out yet, and my searching came up with something similar.
I bought a set of dual-function Hyper-Lites. Small banks of 8 led's set up for both running lights and brake lights (w/ a flashing option). Seemed like the best way to go at the time. Installation was pretty easy, only had to take a few pieces off the scoot, and some time spent trying to fish some wires. Picture 1 shows the scoot with the lower panels removed and the lights out of the way.
Picture 2 shows the hyper-lites flasher module wired in to the harness, and the wires running up and out at the brake light.
Picture 3 shows the wiring taped back up and ready to put away.
Picture 4 shows the lights mounted under the top case.
Picture 5 shows the lights in running light mode... Nice and bright!
Picture 6 shows the lights in flash/brake mode - don't stare at them... You'll go blind!
Now for the review... On a bright sunny day (last saturday), one of the people that I rode with said they are seriously bright, and that if she looked at them for a few seconds then looked away, she could still see them! So they are incredibly bright! I had hoped to be writing a glowing review for all of you, but all is not perfect here. When I first start the scoot for the day, the lights work as advertised... Running light intensity, flash for five seconds when I hit the brakes, then on solid at brake light intensity. The problem is, at some point into the ride, they go on full intensity and stay there. No more low intensity running lights, and no flashing brake light. I've contacted Hyper-Lites and they said they'd look into it and get back to me... They never did.
The odd part, and the part that makes me think I missed something, is that there are two wires running to the LX50's tailight assembly. They are for the brake/running light. But before you say "just try the other wire", they end up spliced together in a single connector. Now the wiring diagram doesn't show two wires there, just one... Might I have missed something? I'd like to edit this post to give a glowing review - because these suckers are truly bright, but I think I need some help to figure this one out.
To Hyper-Lites credit, when I screwed up one of their connectors (telco) and couldn't find one anywhere else, they had some new ones to me in about a day.
The yellow reflective tape my wife found one day at a sporting goods store - very bright! and I just last week did the Solas tape in the top box reflector thingy as well.
Install 1 - little piggy butt without its skirts - Oops! Maybe a little too risque!
Install 2 - Hyper lights wired in.
Install 3 - tapped in
The lights mounted under the top case
Running light mode.
Flash mode
