HOW TO: Rigid LED Install with Wiring

CDK said:

Strange. Your light bar must be internally rectified, since LEDS can't run on AC current. I did notice my lights flickered too at an idle, but turn nice and steady when you rev it up a little. Now you've got me curious, perhaps I will remove my bridge rectifier and see what happens. Everything I've read about Rigid LEDs says they need DC power to work......

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CDK said:

Looks good AK! Do you have a headlight delete in? I can't tell from the pics. Which light bar did you go with and did you use a rectifier?

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What is a balanced charging system?

A balanced charging system is when the manufacturer designs lets say 25 amp charging system and the sled uses 20 to 22 amps of it to run the sled.

The R/R (regulator/rectifier) only needs to get rid of 3 or so amps, so it is happy. Now if you take that same sled and run led taillights and marker lights and maybe some led headlights now your making the R/R get rid of lets say 10 amps, now its working hard and getting hot. Although it seems like your doing your sled a favor, you're actually slowly killing your R/R. Not to mention if you unplug your headlights. Wow!!!!

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mountainhorse said:

AK... Where did you buy that light?? and What did it cost?

Thx in advance. .

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No plug/play harnesses available.

Like CDK shows... he runs a higher value, 3 ohm, resistor to protect the VR, to work at the same time as the LED's,
because the LED's draw less power than the stock lights

.... and another, lower value, 2 ohm, resistor to protect the VR when the LED's are turned off using the low-beam
position on the stock switch.

Also note: The resistors need to be mounted to a decent sized metal piece, like the bulkhead or some other part,
that will act as a "heatsink" since the resistors can get hot.

If you want to actually plug this into the factory harness without cutting anything... Substitute the deutsch 3 pin
connector on the LED side for one of these and simply plug it into one of the unused headlight connectors on the
factory hood harness (make sure your wires are long enough to allow you to plug it in when fitting hood)

http://www.ebay.com/itm/261287906810

OR

http://www.ebay.com/itm/111428542166

Quote: CDK
I got a few PM’s regarding my LED setup, so I thought I would create an instructional on how I installed it. Start to finish, here’s what I did:

Background info: I already installed a Mountain Fit headlight delete on my sled previously. I wanted the additional venting for the planned turbocharged big-bore I’m going to be running. However, I do ride a ton at night, so I needed good lighting. I could have gone with a helmet light, but I like not having to worry about a cord connecting me to the sled. Therefore, LED’s it is.

I went with two Rigid Industries LED Dually D2 spotlights. Rigid has an excellent reputation for bulletproof lights, so in my opinion they were worth the cash. I also decided to mount the lights to the over-structure, rather than mount them in the hood. I didn’t want anything extra in the hood since I take it off so often, plus aluminum makes a much better mount than a plastic hood.

I chose power these lights using the factory AC lighting circuit. Couple reasons for this; I wanted to put a load on the circuit so I didn't have to worry about smoking a VR, and this also made for the cleanest wiring since I could use the factory hi-low beam switch. Since LED's are so bright, I wanted the ability to turn them off if necessary. The biggest issue here is that the LED's require DC voltage; this means converting the circuit to DC with a bridge rectifier. I picked one up from mouser.com for next to nothing.

I wired the lights so that on hi-beam, the LED’s would light, and low beam they would shut off. To maintain the correct load on the circuit (same as the factory halogens), I used two resistors. One the low beam, I used a 100W 2 ohm resistor which simulated the factory load from two headlights. On the high beam side, I used the rectifier to convert the voltage to DC, then wired in a 75W 3 ohm resistor. According to my math (which is poor at best), this resistor along with the LED’s should create approximately the same load as factory. The resistors came from Mouser as well.

Below is the basic wiring diagram for how I hooked everything up. You can see I used a Deutsch connector to attach the new harness to the sled.

I chose to tie into the factory head light wiring below the hood harness plug. Like I said, I take my hood off all the time, so I didn’t want to fumble with an extra plug going into one of the existing headlight plugs. If you didn’t want to cut into the factory wiring, this would by FAR be the easiest way to install this. Pics below on how I cut the wires and attached a new connector.

Once I figured out the wiring, I made a simple bracket to mount the lights to the over-structure. I had to do a ton of measuring and test fitting before I could figure out exactly where to mount them so they would shine through the mesh delete correctly. I used 1” square steel tubing, since that’s what I had lying around the garage. If I did it again, I would definitely use aluminum since the steel is pretty beefy.

Bottom of the bracket is 2 ¾” below the center of the lower bolt.

Test fitting and a bit of paint.

It actually worked out so the LED’s would mount directly over the over structure, so I decided to drill holes right through and bolt everything together with 3” carriage head bolts. Super strong, should never vibrate loose.

Once I had the bracket finished. I attached my new wiring harness to the bracket. The resistors are mounted directly to the steel pipe which should help dissipate heat. In the pics they’re just held on with zip ties; I will replace with some small bolts later. All connections were soldered and heat shrunk for moisture protection. The plug on the pigtail sticking down is what hooks into the new Deutsch connector below the factory hood plug.

Once everything was complete, I bolted it up and fire up the sled. Worked exactly how I hoped, with the high beams triggering the LED’s, and the low beams powering the 2 ohm resistor. These things are awesomely bright!

Sorry for the long winded post, but I wanted to be thorough enough that anyone could duplicate what I did. Couple lessons learned:

- I should have used Dually flood beams, instead of spot. The spots throw light an insanely long distance, but the focal beam is too narrow. I think one spot and one flood would probably be the ticket.
- Use aluminum rather than steel for the bracket
- Measure wire length carefully. Some wound up being too short or too long, and were hard to deal with when I attached the harness to the square tube.

Parts used:

Rectron 10A 400V Bridge Rectifier
http://ca.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Rectron/BR104/?qs=%2fha2pyFadujkRyixXUCg88PV52YTm6VLE40ZBYq%252blH4%3d

Arcol 100W 2 Ohm Resistor
http://ca.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Arcol/HS100-2R0-1/?qs=%2fha2pyFadujijxGS6LgfEoka4divYsjA5qhDQVP9R2uWHhL34%2f9MuQ%3d%3d

Arcol 75W 3 Ohm Resistor
http://ca.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Arcol/HS75-3R0-F/?qs=%2fha2pyFadugiFpn9EoXanWVQC2WYIqmtWREwlMe3SXnfWv65RltN8A%3d%3d

Deutsch DT 3 pin connector, male and female
http://www.ebay.ca/itm/Deutsch-DT-3-Pin-Connector-Kit-14-16-GA-Nickel-Contacts-/321151671195?pt=Race_Car_Parts&hash=item4ac6219b9b&vxp=mtr#ht_933wt_1124

Rigid Dually D2 Spotlights
I picked them up from a local store, but you can find them all over the net.

That’s it folks. Like I said, I’m no electrician, just a dude that likes tinkering. If you have suggestions on how to improve, by all means chime in!

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