Modern Vespa

Recently, the standard BA20D LED headlight bulb I'd been running burnt out. I swapped it back to an incandescent I had lying around and have been riding around feeling blind ever since.

Part of the problem is that this time of year, it's dark both in the morning when I'm riding to work and when I'm coming home, so good lighting is essential. Especially when you're avoiding black ice, slush, and the usual assortment of idiots on the road.

I saw on here where someone had installed a 5.75" sealed beam LED headlight, and so I figured that since I already did the LED and full DC conversion, I would do the same this time. I have the SIP (Vape) DC ignition, so lots of power output. This seemed like a good way to take advantage of it.

So I looked on Amazon and found this beast, Newest 80W DOT Approved 5-3/4" 5.75" Osram Chips LED Projector Headlight for Motorcycle/Bike(Black).

45W draw on low, 80W draw on high beams, with 4,500 lumens of output. It's almost as good as the lights in your car.

Mounting was relatively straightforward. I threw together some brackets out of aluminum sheeting, drilled and tapped a couple of M4 holes in the cooling fins, then crimped new ends onto the existing lighting wires and I was good-to-go.

The brackets were going to be prototypes, and I still might re-fabricate them with stiffer metal at some point if it doesn't stay properly adjusted, but for now, they're adequate. It's amazing what working in 9f temperatures will do to your quality standards.

The difference is astounding. With the incandescent bulb, I felt basically blind. Now...I expect it will be not so much.

Since it was single-digit temps and there's a bit of snow on the ground, I didn't take it for a spin last night, but I'm reasonably confident that this is going to be a good modification and I'll probably do the same to the Sprint once it's back on the road.

Fantastic Chandlerman!...and $60 is a drop in the bucket for a very nice headlight upgrade. With 80 watts, it might be a good idea to install a volt meter.

It's 45W on low beam, 80W on high, and the Vape allegedly puts out 110W at idle. I'll probably still do it, because I like gauges, though

I did not notice any appreciable difference in brightness between idling and revving the motor, so I'm not too worried.

And it's not like my battery was doing too much good after sitting in below zero temps all week without running.

I'd be interested seeing how you fit one in the Sprint.

That's awesome Chandlerman - thanks for posting this!

I should've taken a picture comparing the two lights, but it's actually a slightly smaller volume, especially depth, than the stock light and reflector unit. There's a lot more room in the headset now than there was.

Will I be able to fit one in the Sprint? Good question. I'm trying to focus on getting my momentum back on the motor build now that I'm in town and the weather has warmed up a little for a couple days, at least.

I also picked up some sheet metal at the hardware store this morning in case I decide the brackets aren't up to snuff, but I'm going to take the "if it ain't broke" stance on it for now.

I just installed a 12 volt gauge on my PK200XL project (the scoot has a Vape as well). When I was testing how many watts the stator could keep up with, it kinda looked like 110 watts was a bit optimistic on Vape's side of things. I'm hoping to get out today to double check my results. I'll keep you posted of my findings.

Please do!

My draw is pretty nominal. 5W LED tail light, another 5W LED brake light, 45W or 80W for the headlight, 10W per side for turn signals.

With an 8AH AGM battery, I think I'm safe, but now you have me curious. I'll point the multi-meter at it sometime this weekend so we can compare notes at least a little.

Looks very impressive Chandlerman. Are you able to measure the amps drawn at high beam? 80 seems like a lot.

I bought a Vape. Seems nice so far. But - I have LED indicators, not sure what they draw but they don't really work at idle. Just above idle, no problem. So I'm with Whodatschrome here, 110 at idle seems pretty optimistic.

Ginch--are you running with or without a battery?

I'll fire it up and measure amperage after I finish grinding on the Sprint's jug.

Without at the moment.

My battery was basically dead--10.5V when I powered it on.

I started the motor and after a couple minutes, the charge climbed up to 13.5V at the battery.

At low idle (1,350 RPM's), there was a tiny bit of strobing from the headlight. Above about 1,500, though, that went away but the brightness remained steady. Voltage also held steady at 13.5V throughout, whether on high beams or low.

Sadly, I realize that I'm going to have to come up with something different for the Sprint. I wasn't thinking about the fact that it has a smaller radius for the headset.

Of course, there's always this option...

Here are my findings on my Vape unit...
First off, I have a 14Ah Li-ion battery in my PK200. The battery requires a minimum of 13.1 volts for it to charge correctly.

When all the lights are off and the engine is at 2600RPMs, my volt meter shows that the stator is putting out 13.8 volts.

With my 21 watt LED headlight and rear LED taillights (I'm guessing a total around 22 to 25 watts), I stator output is at 13.7 volts at 2660RPMs.

With about 25 watts of headlight and taillight, PLUS another 21 watt spot light, I read 13.5 volts at 2690 RPMs (about 46 watts total).

With about 25 watts of headlight and taillight, PLUS TWO 21 watt spot lights, I read 13 volts at 2790 RPMs (about 65 watts).

With about 25 watts of headlight and taillight, PLUS TWO 21 watt spot lights, PLUS 20 watts for grip heaters (the heaters draw 20 watts on low, 40 watts on high), I read 12.7 volts at 2930 RPMs (about 85 watts total).

From my findings, I don't see anywhere close to 100 watts of output at idle with my stator.

I have also read that some LED manufactures (i.e. "ebay LED lights") tend to fudge their LED watt ratings in their advertising...as in, they might claim their LED is 100 watts, but in reality it might only be half that. I can't say for sure first hand, only from what I've read. What I can say is, that just about any light will be brighter than the stock headlight!

You got me wondering about lighting intensity, so I did a little googling and here's what I came up with. The first thing I learned is that there are entire forums dedicated to the discussion of all types of lighting. This didn't surprise me, much as I learned there are entire forums dedicated to the discussion of nothing but antique plumbing a while back while trying to sort out some issues in one of my bathrooms.

Getting back on topic, in the US, the DOT specifies a range of 800-1200 Lumens per-lamp for incandescent headlights and "Under ECE regulations, H7 bulbs must emit between 1350 and 1650 lumens at 13.2v. Under US regulations, H7 bulbs must emit between 1188 and 1512 lumens at 12.8v."

The 35W BA20D incandescent I had in there for the past few weeks was basically useless. Even at night, I'd have to put a glove in front of it to confirm it was on in some cases. Not so much now.

Also, I found some instructions on aiming motorcycle headlights that I figured I'd share as long as we're on the topic. I'll be checking that later today, because I'm pretty much positive that I'm not going to be compliant and I don't want to get pulled over for, basically, the crime of being dumb.

Thanks for doing that WDC! If you were to keep adding load do you think it would keep up?
Also what about at idle? Is there a way of measuring that?

Ginch, I think it's going to depend in part on what your idle is set at. The low end is where I saw the most sensitivity to output, as one would expect.

On a side note, I didn't get my headlight adjusted yesterday, but it's definitely going to need it. Also, my brackets interfered slightly with the shift and throttle tubes riding to the train this morning, so I'll be going back in to adjust both of those issues sooner than later.

It looks like Whodatschrome's sytem was putting out about 85W of output at 3,000 RPM's, which seems reasonable and certainly enough.

I need to order a battery monitor/load meter for my boat project, so once I get that ordered and it arrives, I'll throw it on the scoot and get some hard numbers and post them here.

The aluminum brackets weren't doing it, and I couldn't get the beam aimed correctly, so I made some new ones. 16 gauge steel seems to be doing a better job, but took lot more work to get them built up.

The light is now protruding a few millimeters further forward than I would like, but it's in there and aimed correctly.

We're having an ice storm at the moment, so no pictures tonight.

Awesome work I am about to start some kinda project like this trying to get LEDS into a trapezoidal GL's headset. The current one is prob incandescent and just so weak I ended up doing this to it for the mean time for dusk driving back home. Works surprisingly well these little switch things are bright!

I love it!

I'm going to research something that will fit in my Sprint's headlight next. Whatever that turns out to be could work well for you, too.

Have you looked at an LED replacement bulb for the existing reflector? I did that for a while, and while it wasn't nearly as good, it worked pretty well.

If I can't find something that I"m happy with, though, I may go with another light like I have mounted into a housing and attached to the legshield.

Hmm...I don't think so Ginch. It seems that around 65 watts (when RPMs are just above idle), is just about "breaking even" with the stator recharging the battery...at least with a Li-ion battery though. Since those have around a 13.1 to a 13.3 volt resting state, they will require a little more volts to keep them "full". Maybe a standard lead acid battery would be a better option?...since they have about a 12.6 resting state (or whatever it's called), then the stator wouldn't have to provided as much voltage back into the battery.

I didn't check at idle because my idle was way off. I didn't want to spend the few minutes to sort it out because the I wanted to get the voltage documented before it started raining on me.

Here's another thing...I have a couple KTM dirtbikes, and both of them have a TrailTech 100 watt DC stator conversion on them. Both of those bikes 100 watt TT stators don't seem to have trouble pumping out 80 watts (I have the same Trailtech 12V gauge on them as that's on my PK200). Maybe some of the Vape's watts are lost in SIP's German translation? Now I kinda want to put a 12 volt gauge on my US market PX150 (it's a PX200 now), and see how much output its stator is putting out. The US market has an excellent lighting system. The factory 55/60 watt headlight is pretty bright. Piaggio even wired in a relay for the headlight. I'm guessing that it had to do with America's DOT laws (Department Of Transportation). I also floated the ground (DC conversion) on that PX2 scoot as well a while back. So it would be interesting to see how much watts it's putting out.

Ecto, that's ... epic!

Ha ha! Love it!

Even worse, it's Czech -> German -> English. I'm impressed is not like decrypting the instructions that come with Pinasco stuff.

You mean "instructions".

One more update.

I shot a new picture of the light's pattern with the new brackets and the properly adjusted.

If you look at where it hits the telephone pole and trash cans, there's a pretty noticeable difference. in the top of the beam's height.

I'll guess that oncoming traffic thanks me.

Way down at the other end of the power draw range is S-I-P's new PERFORMANCE headlamp unit. It claims to draw a mere 18 watts.

But it also costs three times as much as the 80 watt LED job at the top of this thread.

Has anyone out there had the chance to test this product out? Is a worthwhile addition to a DC-only PX?

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That looks to have a pretty good cutoff. I'm interested to see how much different the beam pattern looks after all your snow melts.

Trust me, I'd love to be able to show you a snow-free picture of the beam pattern

Looking at that SIP headlamp, it's super-expensive, but they're nowhere near pushing the laws of physics. It's 868 lumens for 18 watts, or 48 lumens per watt.

You'd be better off just buying a BA20D LED bulb and installing that in the existing housing. That will give you up around 2,000 lumens for under $20 USD.

With my new lamp, on hi-beam, I'm getting 4,500 lumens for 80w, or 56.25 lumens/watt. On low beam, it's 45w and a little over 2,500 lumens.

Comparatively, a 12v35W incandescent bulb produces about 16 lumens per watt, or 560 lumens, which is to say, they suck.

I don't think the LED produces enough heat to melt snow unfortunately... Lumens is only one part of the equation of course (apart from the fudge factor of ebay brightness claims). It's the reflector that does all the heavy lifting, they must be designed for the type of LED globe that goes in to direct the beam. A friend works for Hella here in Aus and they tested a number of retrofit LED globes, and while some were bright enough, the old reflectors were not really up to throwing an adequate beam pattern.

What @Ginch said there jibes with my own limited knowledge of the problem: the bulb has to be designed for the reflector (or vice versa). But who knows -- despite what those guys at Hella tested, maybe there's a BA20 LED bulb out there that they missed and would be an okayish fit for the PX reflector?

@Chandlerman's solution meanwhile is pretty impressive. In my case though it's probably overkill. My goal here isn't too ambitious, just to get say 50% more light out the front in a way that doesn't add any load to the already maxed-out electrics. Or require frequent replacement.

I suspect that SIP produced that headlamp for people like me, who want just a little bit more, and priced it right where it's... painful but tolerable.

@Chandlerman what do you think your custom job will be like over time? How much heat's it generating in there? Do LED units like this tend to last and last or do they suddenly up and die one day?

I completely agree with the premise. I went and dug out a couple LED bulbs and compared them to an incandescent. The location of the light source was the same distance from the base of the bulb for the LED's and the incandescent in once case and on the other, there's only LED's on the top, and the high beam determines if one or both LED's are lit. I set the beam with it on high beam and just ran it that way the entire time I had it. Lots of light, but one of the LED's died after about a year.

I bought it because it was cheap and I wanted to see if it was noticeably brighter. It was brighter, and the beam/dispersal shape was about the same as before, just much whiter and more of it.

When I went back to the incandescent after it burned out, I felt like I was riding blind, but I know that was what I used to think of as normal at night. We're talking Vespa's here, so there's no such thing as overkill This makes perfect sense, and in the simplest terms, even a badly optimized LED bulb would still give you more Effective Lumens per input watt than incandescent. Since I'll be shopping for a similar light for my Sprint soon enough, I did a little digging and the only 4.75" sealed beam LED I could find that wasn't sketchy as hell looking was a JW Speaker 6130, which is rated as 1,330 Raw Lumens (440 Effective Lumens) for Low Beam and 2,230 Raw Lumens ( 840 Effective Lumens) for High Beam. Compare that to 560 raw lumens for incandescent and it's looking not to shabby, even if it's a little bit pricey at $244. From an engineering perspective, this thing has massive heat sink fins and is very solidly built. I think the warmest I've ridden in since I got it is about 40f, so I can't really say if cooling is going to be an issue or not. Overall quality is quite good and the LED's themselves are not running at their rated capacity, which will help extend its life. The light is designed to be housed in an enclosure, so I'm not too worried about it overheating inside the headset.

With the other lights, they have tended to fail suddenly, usually after about a year. With the Orange one, one light went out, so I only had the low beam side, then the other LED went out a little while later.

The right-hand LED takes both AC & DC inputs and I've been running one in my VBB for a year or so. I have a P200 ignition in there, so it's 12v and not running much else, power-wise. Just LED tail & brake lights, but no battery, so the current the stator puts out is the current it gets. It doesn't see nearly as much run time as the Stella, but it's doing fine and is, again, much better visibility at night than the incandescent was.

Thanks for that writeup @Chandlerman. Very, uh, illuminating. (Sorry, had to say it.) Anyhoo: what *is* that LCD bulb on the right? And is there any similar variant of that with an H4 connector?

LOL!

It was a Biltek Headlight LED Conversion Bulb S2 BA20D to LED High Low Beam Light Motorcycle ATV. No longer available, but heres a EverBrightt 2-Pack 900 Lumens White H4 COB 12W Led Bulb for Motorcycle Headlights Lamp High Low Beam, which is available in H4.

Tomorrow night, I'll try to remember to drag the VBB out and shoot a picture of the Biltek for comparison.

Thanks for that Chandlerman.

I'll give that bulb you linked to a try. In the meantime, there's *all kinds* of other H4 bulbs out there nowadays that weren't there a year or so ago when I was poking around for such things.

Here's some slightly more upmarket options that are still affordable. Not sure if they'd interact with the reflector properly though:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01C1AOSVS/ref=sspa_dk_detail_1?psc=1&pd_rd_i=B01C1AOSVS&pd_rd_w=Oe3vt&pf_rd_p=10ebaf99-73de-4f5d-a994-e7f5fc52f86f&pd_rd_wg=LskVZ&pf_rd_r=Q81FWZ6RWRPPDMJ9EBRV&pd_rd_r=c189ba98-321d-11e9-b9d0-e312d9a21541

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07FGDT6Q4/ref=sspa_dk_detail_4?psc=1&pd_rd_i=B07FGDT6Q4&pd_rd_w=Oe3vt&pf_rd_p=10ebaf99-73de-4f5d-a994-e7f5fc52f86f&pd_rd_wg=LskVZ&pf_rd_r=Q81FWZ6RWRPPDMJ9EBRV&pd_rd_r=c189ba98-321d-11e9-b9d0-e312d9a21541

Both of those look interesting. Maybe I'll grab one just to have something to throw in the Sprint since I may get it running, if not finished, this weekend.

I'm always looking for a better solution for the Super... which is a different, smaller size than your Supers in the US... 115mm apparently although the opening in the headset is 125 or so.
Any I had seen the JW Speaker ones at SIP and was looking to see where else they were available. And found this.
Even when you take into account the exchange rate ($265 AU = $190 US), that's $190 vs $80... not a good comparison for SIP.

https://headlightrevolution.com/jw-speaker-model-8415-evolution-par36-4-5-round-led-headlight-12-24v-sae-ece-led-high-low-beam-light-with-xenoy-housing-adjustable-mount/

The light I'd ordered for the Sprint arrived today and it was actually a 5.75" light, so it's now back in the box. Talking to the customer service rep, he said that it's hard to find DOT-approved 4.75" headlights, so they don't stock any.

The difference between the 4.5" and 4.75" JW Speaker lights is that the 4.75 puts out a LOT more light, like 220 vs 500 effective lumens, and costs a lot more accordingly.

Right now, I'm holding off on doing anything about the headlight for the sprint, although I'm going to have to do something soon.

It's been a chaotic day, so probably no scooter progress tonight on any front.

It's a shame they're so ugly.

I remember seeing the brand JW Speaker pop up on the 4x4 offroad scene about 4 or so years ago (for stock DOT replacement headlights, NOT as "offroad lights''), so i'm guessing that they're a quality product. I have no first hand experience with them. I did think that they could have picked a better name for their company though.

That seems to be the theme with all LED lights that i've seen...but yes, the 'Speakers do take the cake when it comes to a face that only a mother could love.