FARKLE ATTACK 2011: Clearwater Krista LED light install

[ka5ysy]

Well, as we all know, it never, ever ends....


For quite awhile now I have been unhappy with the results from my Trailtech HID lamps. They take about 30 seconds to get to full bright status, and do not really like to be stopped and started a lot. The other major gripe I have had from day one is the fact that they fog internally almost instantly. I still suspect that this is a result of poor quality control on the part of whatever contractor assembles the lamp capsules into the reflectors. Generally, fogging of these lamps results from oil contamination (probably bare fingers?) touching the capsules, and the high temps cause it to burn off, thus the fog.

Anyway, I have been looking at the Clearwater Kristas for some time, and finally got aggravated with the Trailtech's when one failed to light one evening a couple of weeks ago.

The Kristas are beautiful 4" diameter CNC milled housings containing three high power LED lamps. The housings are connected to an electronics box containing the circuitry to dim the lamps (Great feature!!) so you do not blind on-coming drivers at night.

The module contains a lot of wires for connection to the lamps: a 12VDC power supply, some interface wiring for power-on sensing, and two wires that do essentially the same thing. One goes to the horn hot lead, and the other to the high-beam hot lead. These cause the LED's to come to full brightness if you blow the horn or use the high beam, and may or may not be used, depending on the preference of the owner. I chose not to use them at this time and simply put some heat-shrink tubing on the leads and tucked them out of harms way.

There is another connector that attaches to the lead for the "dimmer" which is a pot or "volume control" that appears to contain a circuit board, and is mounted to the handlebar or wherever is convenient to the installation. I fabricated a bracket that mounts to the left hand mirror stalk and mounted the one-off switch for the Kristas and the pot, as well as the toggle switch for the existing Hyperlite white LED's I have had on the bike since the install of the HID's. I will shoot a photo and post is later in this thread.

Anyway, the installation instructions are quite easy, except I had to scratch my head as to where to mount the electronics box because the leads for the lamp housings and the brightness pot are not that long and made installing the module under the seat impossible. The kit I received for the R1200R is the generic kit for any bike, which may be the cause of this problem. After thinking about it over a glass of wine and a good night's sleep, I discovered that it can be mounted behind the canister bracket (mine is still there for the time being!) on the right side with the wiring bundles above and below the bracket piece. There is a gap on the potted module that perfectly fits the bracket, so simply using some zip-ties attaches the module to the bracket.

There is a supplied on-off switch with the kit, as well as a bunch of stainless steel hardware, I did not use. Since I had the push-button on-off switch feeding 12VDC to the HID's already in place, I simply tied in the Kristas to those leads, saving a lot of work and having to pull the tank off to run wires .

The lamps themselves are mounted with the supplied brackets and several bolts and washers in the kit, and very easily attached to the existing Lumalink brackets and makes a very clean and solid install.

These lights rock at night. Plenty of bright white light that actually makes the headlight on high beam look dirty yellow !. I set the lamps to spread the light and it makes cornering quite easy at any reasonable speed with the light filling in the turn. In daylight I keep them turned down "low" and they make great running lights and I have noticed that cagers look very hard at me now: between the Kissan headlight modulator and the super bright LED array in the nice triangle pattern, they really do not know what I am, but they stop !

I highly recommend these lamps to anyone considering additional lighting. Low power draw and super bright light is hard to beat !

Website is here:
http://www.clearwaterlights.com/infopg_krista.html

Here is the result:

[nylife]

very nice setup but $649 is kind of a lot, but it does look great

[ka5ysy]

very nice setup but $649 is kind of a lot, but it does look great

Actually, considering that the bulbs for the HID's are about $80 a pop and don't last any reasonable amount of time, the LED lamps are kind of a bargain. I have probably spent that much and more between the initial cost and all the replacement bulbs.

[ka5ysy]

Here is the bracket I fabricated for the switches. The small toggle switches the white Hyperlite groups under the main lights. These were put on the bike just after I mounted the original Trailtech HID lamps for added visibility during the day. They are wired into the GPS accessory line, and turn off 30 seconds after bike shutdown. This is convenient for night arrivals until you get some other lights turned on.

The PIAA switch is what the HID lamps were originally switched with. I used this setup because it is a nice compact switch, and being lazy, I did not want to pull the tank to run more wires. The Kristas get switched main 12VDC from this switch setup. It is push on/push off and has a red or green LED indicator depending on state.

The bracket is a piece of aluminum angle stock cut to size and shape, and edges rounded with some fine tooth files. It is sprayed with primer and final coat is gray Krylon.

The round knob is the potentiometer "volume control" that adjusts the brightness of the Krista LED lamps.

[deilenberger]

I might suggest that mounting these below the LumaLinks might be a better idea. At full compression, at least on my bike - the HellaFF50's could contact the tank if the front end was turned sharply. I found this out when measuring suspension travel with a HyperPro shock with no spring on it installed. One must also take care that if hung below the LumaLinks - the lights don't hit the telelever swing-arm at some compression distances with a the bars being full stop left or right.

My original photos of the first R12R LumaLinks install (mine was the prototype) showed the Hella lights above the mounts. I later changed this after finding the possibility of contact between the light and tank.

Of course the real likelihood of this happening is probably slim - since you'd already be in lots of trouble if you had the front end fully compressed when at the bar stops.. but thought I'd point it out, just in case.

EDIT: In looking at your photos - it appears your LumaLink mounts are mounted much lower then mine are. Mine are about 3" above the bridge between the fork sliders. Yours appears to be right above the bridge. That may mean this isn't a concern. Ah - I remembered why I mounted mine where they are. Mounted lower - it appears that them hitting the Telelever swingarm was a concern. You may want to check that. Or not..

[redwing]

ka5ysy.... looks like your pretty well set.... having a headlight modulator along with the 2 aux lights must get a lot of attention as you mentioned. Got your switches well laid out. If I read your post correctly the horn could be set to make the lights come on .... can you set the brightness when the horn is hit?

So you are set for lights... correct???

Robert

[ka5ysy]

EDIT: In looking at your photos - it appears your LumaLink mounts are mounted much lower then mine are. Mine are about 3" above the bridge between the fork sliders. Yours appears to be right above the bridge. That may mean this isn't a concern. Ah - I remembered why I mounted mine where they are. Mounted lower - it appears that them hitting the Telelever swingarm was a concern. You may want to check that. Or not..

Don: After I originally mounted the Trailtech HID's you mentioned that and when I checked, they were able to contact the tank, so I moved the brackets down to the cross member bridge, and that solved the problem. These lamps clear everything quite easily, and when I was installing them I specifically compressed the forks to check clearances on both sides, as well as wiring clearances.

ka5ysy.... looks like your pretty well set.... having a headlight modulator along with the 2 aux lights must get a lot of attention as you mentioned. Got your switches well laid out. If I read your post correctly the horn could be set to make the lights come on .... can you set the brightness when the horn is hit?

So you are set for lights... correct???

Robert

Hi Robert: The setup is hard to beat. The funny thing is that these LED lamps are so bright the modulated high beam looks really wimpy !

Your read is correct: There are two interface sensor wires that you can tie into the horn and high beam +12VDC lines. When there is power on, the "sensor" wires tell the dimmer circuitry to bring the LED's to full bright. The effect is like a flash bulb firing in your face ! The lamps go back to the "dim" setting of the pot when the horn is silent or when on low beam on the headlamp.

I chose not to use them because the Kisan modulator requires that the high beam switch be "ON" to sense the daylight level and start or stop the modulator circuitry and the LED's would be on bright constantly. I might get energetic and tie in the horn to the lamps, but I generally do not use the horn anyway. I never, ever argue right or way rules, and the couple of times there were lane incursions that I could not escape from easily, a swift kick to the driver door got their attention.


As I write this, it just occurred to me that I could hook the lamp sensor wire on the load side of the modulator wiring and actually modulate the LED's. Boy would that attract attention as bright as those things are !! Probably highly illegal anyway!

To answer your last question: Yes, for a while I think I am set for lighting. However....... one can never have too many lights or farkles. Actually I failed to mention that an additional pair of wires out of the interface box are for connecting a set of the Clearwater Glenda lamps (smaller cousin of the Kristas!). Hmmmm..... that might look cool too