headlights

[machineman89]

i have a honda 200s atc, no battery....soooo how do i go about upgrading my lighting and or adding a small 12 volt battery and i guess charging system?????? i tried some LED flood lamps i bought on line but i guess burned them out.......not sure what is really goin on with the trike at this point.... need more light and a wider pattern and my old headlight is toast as of right now....any help would be appreaciated

[jb2wheels]

Key thing to remember is the trikes with no batteries are running an AC lighting system.
Also, they use the lights as the regulator so if you blow either bulb, the other will blow shortly, too.
And, the lighting coils are pretty low capacity - like 50W to run a 45W head light and 5W tail light.

If you want to run a battery, you could try one of the regulator/rectifier combos from any of the little Chinese ATVs.
I think you need to modify the lighting coil for a floating ground but I have not done that myself.

Or, you could have the lighting coil custom wound and put a 130W bulb in the headlight.
Or, replace the lighting coil with an off-the-shelf 75W coil and run a 55W bulb full power.

If you're going to run LEDs, you could probably just mount a battery without a charging system and use it to run the lights in a total loss setup.

[machineman89]

figuring this out is a lil overwhelming....what seems like the best route in your opinion? seems like u have some expierence in this area, tail light is a LED that runs already with no issue, headlight assembly is destroyed.... really wnna upgrade to a LED front set or HID if its reliable enough

[jb2wheels]

Xpress did LEDs on his Tecate. Also some info in this thread about adding a battery to an Ac trike:

http://www.3wheelerworld.com/showthread.php/147286-Anyone-around-here-running-LED-headlights-yet

[kb0nly]

Those small led bulbs have a diode and current limiting resistor in them, they will run on AC fine. As for running a large LED type headlight though they will need DC. You can go the simple route, a four wire rectifier/regulator which is pretty cheap, and then run DC to the new headlights. The only problem is you will have the same issues you have with a regular headlight, it will be dim at idle, and will have a bit of a fast flicker to it without a battery to smooth the DC power out from the rectifier/regulator module.

What i would do, rewire for DC and add a small battery. You wouldn't need a lot as your not using it for electric start just the lighting. Its not hard to rewire these for DC i have done it a few times now, i will describe how you do it on a 200S, as you have it in a 200X frame it should be the same but i would have to look at the 200X diagram just to confirm that.

From the alternator you have a Yellow and Green wire, the green wire is the system ground, its grounded to the frame at the ignition coil mounting screw. The yellow and green wires are the two ends of the alternator coil down in the stator. If you buy a simple four wire rectifier/regulator what you need to do is take the yellow and green from the engine and connect them to the AC inputs of the rectifier/regulator. I can further diagram this if you decide to go this route and show you exactly where these wires go..

Then you take the yellow from the frame that used to plug into the alternator output and that goes to the DC output of the rectifier/regulator, and the green from the frame that used to go to the alternator now goes to the ground terminal on the rectifier/regulator.

Now you have DC on the Yellow wire up to your headlight switch and the lights will be on DC. The Black/Red wire from the ignition source coil in the stator is what powers your ignition system separately, don't touch that leave it be.

Now if you wanted to add a battery, the easiest way is a little 7ah gel cell battery tucked into the toolbox or strapped to the frame somewhere, you don't need a big 12-14ah battery unless you plan on running the lights a lot without the engine running. The 7ah gel cell is just there to keep the voltage consistent and the lights at full brightness at idle, it acts as a filter for the DC, a large capacitor can do it also but a battery is better in this case. To connect the battery you put the negative to the frame or to the green wire, as long as its grounded it can be either. The positive i run through a 10a fuse and tie that into the Yellow wire which is the DC output from the rectifier/regulator. The fuse just provides some safety in case the alternator coil ever shorts out, or a wire gets chaffed, etc. The engine will now run the lights and charge the battery and you can do just about anything for lighting options as long as you stay within the ability of the alternator.

The alternator will do about 4.5 amps, roughly 55w for the 200S. The stock headlight and tailight combo ran at 50w, 45w headlight and 5w taillight.

So HID is out of the question, too high of a turn on current, they generally take around 8-10 amps for initial firing and around 5-8 amps for running a mere 35w HID. I have played around with them a lot putting HID kits into offroad light housings for trucks and farm equipment, they work great but they are not energy efficient as say LED. I have a pair of 27w LED lights on my 200ES, from the sound of what you want for light these would be more like it for you. They draw 2a each, so 4a per pair, and you can still have enough power left over to run the taillight without draining the battery. Put an LED bulb in for the taillight and you will actually have some power to spare to keep the battery well topped off.

I run a 27w pencil beam and a 27w flood together as a pair, the pencil beam gives me the far out reach i want while the other flood beam gives me a lot of light right in front of me and to the sides.

[jb2wheels]

That the best explanation I've seen for adding a battery and charging circuit to one of these old trikes. Thanks for taking time to do it!

[machineman89]

this helps me out soo much, now timeto ook in to a lil better quality of LED lights and swipe a gel cell from my old man, imma look this over this weekend and see what i can get goin, thanks again for the help, i'll post pics of what i get done...or what i screw up :-)

[kb0nly]

Your welcome guys! I have done it more than a few times, i can do it without even thinking no more... LOL

You can get the four wire rectifier/regulator pretty cheap, under $10 most of the time on eBay. So its not an expensive deal to do it.

Here is the lights that i have..

http://www.ebay.com/itm/27W-9LED-Round-Work-Spot-Pencil-Beam-Lamp-Offroad-Light-For-truck-12-24V-4WD-4x4-/310702216928?pt=Motors_Car_Truck_Parts_Accessories&hash=item48574b96e0&vxp=mtr

http://www.ebay.com/itm/27W-Flood-Beam-LED-Work-Offroads-Lamp-light-Car-Truck-Boating-Camping-DC-12V-24V-/400502026978?pt=Motors_Car_Truck_Parts_Accessories&hash=item5d3fc7f2e2&vxp=mtr

I have them on my snowblower and lawn tractor now also, amazing amount of light from these.

[manilacd35]

kb0nly,
thanks for this post on converting to dc for brighter a headlight. I have a 200x that was converted to a 200m. I got it on the way back from a trip up north. Anyway, It came with a conversion kit, however no installation instruction included and i tried to install it today with no success. I am electrically challenged to say the least. I took a couple of pictures with my phone and was hoping you may offer some more insight. The kit does seem to be a four wire rectifier, but there are a lot more wires that seem to be spliced in along the way. I dont have much of a clue on the AC inputs, but did manage to find the output with my tester when i hooked it up to a battery, there are actually two hot wires. I would appreciate it if you could diagram the rectifier/regulator and whatever other wisdom you have.
Thanks,
dave
184136
184137

[kb0nly]

Ok this is not as hard as you think... So you have a 200X, and i assume a 200X harness that a 200M motor was put into...

On the 200M motor you have two Yellow wires and a Black/Red wire coming out by the recoil. The two Yellow wires is your AC from the alternator, if you look at the rectifier/regulator you will see it has two Yellow wires and a Red and Green. The two Yellow wires should be connected to the two Yellow wires from the motor, nothing else inbetween. The Green wire from the rectifier/regulator becomes your Ground, ground it to the frame and the negative of the battery. The Red wire goes to the positive of the battery, but put a fuse inline, a 10a fuse is sufficient.

Ok thats the basic hookup, the hard part is your going to have to chase down all the connections and just make them work, but its not that bad, get the yellows hooked up, and the output to the battery.

Now if your harness is a 200x then to get power to your lights you just have to find the Yellow wire from the headlight switch that used to go to the 200X motor, that Yellow wire now connects to the battery positive, i would fuse that as well, 5a should be sufficient for that to run the lights.

The ignition system is completely separate and you shouldn't have to touch any other wiring. Yes the lights should then work without it running once you have the battery wired in.