CGGorman's 99 Wide Glide build thread
#11
03-13-2016, 10:16 AM
#12
03-13-2016, 10:57 AM
Club Member
#14
03-17-2016, 04:46 PM
Going to be using a rigid mount solo seat that will leave it exposed, so I bent up a cover panel for the frame area under the seat today. Still need to do a little tweaking and get the seat mounting figured out before I can finish it, but I like what I've got so far. I also need to make some plugs for rear down tubes and make the shock bolt covers before I can call this area finished.
Last edited by cggorman; 01-26-2020 at 02:00 PM.
#15
03-17-2016, 08:37 PM
I forgot to put my lighting stuff in here. Spent a couple weeks working on this stuff...not counting pre-purchase research.
I knew early on that I wanted a stripped down look but didn't want to sacrifice visibility or safety so I spent a lot of time looking into various LED options. Most of the best solutions seem to be coming out of Europe for some reason. My first thought was Kellerman lights for both front and rear indicators, but ultimately decided the style didn't work with my bike.
I ended up finding Motogadget and fell in love with their M-Blaze Disc bar end blinkers. Found a domestic supplier in Revival Cycles and ordered a set, plus the Revival Supernova tail lights.
The M-Blaze (These things are AMAZING!)
The Supernova (very good for their size and power rating.)
After mulling over the Supernovas for a couple days I decided they just weren't visible enough at 50+ feet. They're plenty bright but just so small I was afraid they would disappear in the daytime glare. I am kinda paranoid of people rear-ending or stopping short behind me since I generally have nowhere to go and can't do anything to anticipate their error. I went digging and found some very similar 9 watt LED bolts that I thought would be much brighter. Those were OK. Wider dispersion pattern but I didn't feel they were much more noticable. That left me thinking I needed a larger lens area. Larger, but still discrete and stylish.
Usher in the Motone brand Bates-style tail light. They're a nice upgrade over the cheaper look-alikes. Much heavier build and all stainless (os so I thought. After I ordered the black ones I found out only the polished ones are all stainless. Oh well. The black ones are powder coated inside and out and the hardware and brackets are all stainless.
They ship with LED "bulbs", but I really only wanted the housings. I knew I wouldn't be happy with the original light output. I had a fair amount of previous experience designing and building custom LED light fixtures so I immediately started hatching a scheme to supercharge these Bates housings...
Since I already knew where to look and what to look for, I quickly landed on the LedEngin LZ4 package. It's rated at 440-610 lumens depending on input power (700-1000 mA, 9v max) They're available pre-mounted to 20mm boards which makes them easy to mount and wire. I ordered a couple of them, some wide-angle collimator lens, & resistors. Heatsinking these lighting class diodes is super critical to keep them shining so I also designed and fabbed a combination mounting bracket/heatsink. It's made of .065" solid copper. Early testing showed I needed about 3/4 inch focal length to make the most of the 2" bates lens, but even then it had a really bad "hot spot" in the center. To fix that I added a fresnel behind the fluted Bates lens. That got me just what I wanted: a OEM-quality light spread and a nice unique specular pattern.
The fresnel sections were cut out of stock Harley lenses on the lathe and then glued inside the Bates lens.
Hard to get decent pictures of a light this bright...
Here is the finished custom light next to the LED module that came with it. On the right is the Revival Supernova.
...and the same arrangement with power applied for a rough comparison
Next to my car (bike on the left):
I knew early on that I wanted a stripped down look but didn't want to sacrifice visibility or safety so I spent a lot of time looking into various LED options. Most of the best solutions seem to be coming out of Europe for some reason. My first thought was Kellerman lights for both front and rear indicators, but ultimately decided the style didn't work with my bike.
I ended up finding Motogadget and fell in love with their M-Blaze Disc bar end blinkers. Found a domestic supplier in Revival Cycles and ordered a set, plus the Revival Supernova tail lights.
The M-Blaze (These things are AMAZING!)
The Supernova (very good for their size and power rating.)
After mulling over the Supernovas for a couple days I decided they just weren't visible enough at 50+ feet. They're plenty bright but just so small I was afraid they would disappear in the daytime glare. I am kinda paranoid of people rear-ending or stopping short behind me since I generally have nowhere to go and can't do anything to anticipate their error. I went digging and found some very similar 9 watt LED bolts that I thought would be much brighter. Those were OK. Wider dispersion pattern but I didn't feel they were much more noticable. That left me thinking I needed a larger lens area. Larger, but still discrete and stylish.
Usher in the Motone brand Bates-style tail light. They're a nice upgrade over the cheaper look-alikes. Much heavier build and all stainless (os so I thought. After I ordered the black ones I found out only the polished ones are all stainless. Oh well. The black ones are powder coated inside and out and the hardware and brackets are all stainless.
They ship with LED "bulbs", but I really only wanted the housings. I knew I wouldn't be happy with the original light output. I had a fair amount of previous experience designing and building custom LED light fixtures so I immediately started hatching a scheme to supercharge these Bates housings...
Since I already knew where to look and what to look for, I quickly landed on the LedEngin LZ4 package. It's rated at 440-610 lumens depending on input power (700-1000 mA, 9v max) They're available pre-mounted to 20mm boards which makes them easy to mount and wire. I ordered a couple of them, some wide-angle collimator lens, & resistors. Heatsinking these lighting class diodes is super critical to keep them shining so I also designed and fabbed a combination mounting bracket/heatsink. It's made of .065" solid copper. Early testing showed I needed about 3/4 inch focal length to make the most of the 2" bates lens, but even then it had a really bad "hot spot" in the center. To fix that I added a fresnel behind the fluted Bates lens. That got me just what I wanted: a OEM-quality light spread and a nice unique specular pattern.
The fresnel sections were cut out of stock Harley lenses on the lathe and then glued inside the Bates lens.
Hard to get decent pictures of a light this bright...
Here is the finished custom light next to the LED module that came with it. On the right is the Revival Supernova.
...and the same arrangement with power applied for a rough comparison
Next to my car (bike on the left):
Last edited by cggorman; 01-26-2020 at 02:07 PM.
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TerryMcQ (04-12-2020)
#16
03-17-2016, 08:50 PM
Without fenders or struts, I obviously needed to figure out how to mount these lights. Back to the drawing board...
A quick-n-dirty prototype of revision 2:
A quick-n-dirty prototype of the final revision (3):
Brackets fabricated in .050" 316 stainless. Brazed seams.
Cleaned up and ready for paint:
A quick-n-dirty prototype of revision 2:
A quick-n-dirty prototype of the final revision (3):
Brackets fabricated in .050" 316 stainless. Brazed seams.
Cleaned up and ready for paint:
Last edited by cggorman; 01-26-2020 at 02:12 PM.
#17
03-17-2016, 08:50 PM
#18
03-17-2016, 08:55 PM
#20
03-18-2016, 12:26 AM