A busy kind of week Laverda wise which kicked off meeting up with Tom Battison and his partner Jenny. Tom is on some big European tour and we spent a happy evening swopping tales. Unlike his son, Steve, Tom seems to have a soft spot for CBX’s along with his old Velo. Great company.
Mrs A, Tom & Jenny
I got a set of auxillary LED lights because the headlamp is weak – I know others say it’s not but it’s the same light as fitted to a Honda CG125… I also wanted the lights because I have the Scottish Rally coming up and don’t want to be flying down roads with deer on them. I hooked the lights up direct to the battery and they are bright! My plan is to have one light on with the dip beam and then two for full. The problem is that the lights are just too bright so needed trimming – this required a dimmer box.
Spaghetti junction
Like many motorcyclists I’m not great with electrics so I was dreading wiring up the lights but it proved reasonably straightforward. I gave it a bit of thought and remembered a tip from the guy who gave me the Atlas front disc which is to use the redundant indicator switch as a source of power. It seemed, thought thinking about it unnecessary, that I needed two sources of switched power i.e. comes on with the ignition. The indicator provided one and the other came via the feed to the right hand coil. With this sorted I then realised that ‘white’ seems to be the Laverda colour for high beam wires this ‘break through’ resulted in the little blue light working on the dash!
The setup I have is that first auxillary light works independently and I have set this to give 50% of its full power. So by switching it on via the right indicator position I can run it as a daytime light. The standard lights work independently of the auxiliaries on dip beam so if I choose to just run the normal lighting I can but I can also beef it up by just switching indicator. Full beam however is always augmented by a full power auxillary. I figured that if I was using full beam it wouldn’t be on with oncoming traffic so it didn’t need an independent switch. The trick bit however is that if I have switched on the 50% unit with the dip beam when I switch to high beam this then leaps up from 50% to full power – awesome!
I tried this all out coming back across the Cotswolds and the high beam is amazing – I can see! The low beam needs a bit of work as it didn’t really impact on the dip lights but the principle is proven. The light is ‘white’ as opposed to the limp yellow I’m used to. I think a set of pukka road lights as opposed to these ‘off-road’ lamps would give a more focused beam – they are plenty powerful enough on full beam but just because they’re so bright not because the beam is accurate. Anyways they’ll do for the wilds of Scotland next week.
Lights working it was off to Wales for the weekend and a drop in to the ILOC Rally at Baskerville Hall (see trips).
Nick 🙂
Bent screwdrivers, big hammers and old Laverdas 