Additional Lights Mind Games...

[JamesL]

I had additional driving lights on my previous 1150GS. A PO had fitted halogen spots which eventually died, and during lockdown I replaced them with Denali S4s which worked a treat. The PO had had their set up professionally installed, integrated with the headlights & dip switches and wired out of the main loom bundle under the fuses via a separate relay. So the auxiliaries were off if the main lights were off, and you got driving lights with high beam. I stripped out the dead halogen lights and wired the S4s to the old halogen supply from the relay and job was a good'un.

So, now I'm considering a similar fit to the 'new' 1150GS which is devoid of additional lights. Naturally I need a pair of lights but I'm not too keen on a separate handlebar switch. Denali seem to do a couple of modules, one to switch between 100% and 50% synchronised with the handlebar main / dip; and one to fire up the Denali lights with ignition on. This sort of gets me there; although I'm not sure I need the second module as I also have a (Denali) power board which can switch on (fused) power to an output, triggered by a cable from an ignition-on live wire.

So I was wondering... Has anyone fitted supplementary lights to an R11xx and how did you go about it? Can I model it on switched lights power supply provided by power board (so always on if ignition is on), to 100/50% module, then to the lights themselves? And don't bother with a handlebar switch unless I really need it?

Also, as the S4s are LEDs do I need a relay for the lights supply (I'll need a fuse naturally)? And is there an easy way to switch on supplementary lights with the OE handlebar light switch or is this too hard?

Grateful for thoughts & feelings, especially if there's an easy way to do this which I'm completely missing! Thanks, James

[RiceBurner]

I have Denali S2s (iirc) on a Rockster and I wired them the way I've wired other aux lights in the past.

The lights tend to come with their own looms with 3 "end-points": Power live, Relay live, and a shared negative.

I simply fitted the power live to the battery directly, the shared negative to the battery, and the Relay live I attached to the full-beam instrument panel bulb circuit. With the Denali light loom I think I just followed the instructions for "just" the full power lamp, not the 50% option.

I've never had, and don't want, the aux lights to be on with dip beam (I have no interest in causing extra glare for drivers, I simply want more light on full beam).

[JamesL]

Ha, thanks! I did another Google prowl and found a Denali installation guide which helped too.

Thanks for the thoughts on 50% beam - let me mull that one. Driving lights on full beam only is fine (and the way I had it before), but when you switch to dip it's an 'interesting' drop in candle power! That said, it's way cheaper to leave off the hi/lo module, and if I want to lash out on it later it's plug and play so easy enough to add in.

All the best, J

[slparry]

I fitted some of the BMW spots available on eBay onto my 800GS and can confirm they're exactly the same units as offered by BMW, with the advantage that they were £50 a pair instead of the £450 a set from BMW plus they have some nice universal mounts.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/304528952756

I bought a pre wired wiring loom with relay and switch and took the relay activate feed off the power socket on the bike. The power socket stays live for 30 seconds after switching the ignition off so I get a sort of follow me home lights like the car has

Additionally I upgraded the headlight to an LED unit but to be fair rarely flick to main beam such is the improvement from the spots

Screenshot_20240111-102218.png (678.65 KiB) Viewed 9437 times

[JamesL]

Thanks Steve, interesting how pukka Fleabay can be... I wimped out and threw $$ at a Denali S4 kit; fitted last weekend and will sort alignment in due course. Triggered from the high beam feed (white cable off front connector set, informed by a wiring diagram from GS-Forum.eu). The Denali set comes with seemingly yards of cable, some of which is cuttable, and the rest folded up in the ABS space. Thankfuly mine is the non-ABS model, otherwise I have no idea where it would all go.

I've mounted the lights on an SW Motech light bar - could have gone hard core and bent up a brick tie but decided it would be too agricultural. This sets the spots slightly high so they potentially interfere with the indicators but I'll see how they go before next steps. BUT why does SWM specify that the spots should be mounted on top of the bar? If I hang them underneath, there wouldn't be an issue....

Also, are the OE headlights fused? I can't see that they are explicitly, but there surely must be something somewhere?

Onward!

[RiceBurner]

I've mounted the lights on an SW Motech light bar - could have gone hard core and bent up a brick tie but decided it would be too agricultural. This sets the spots slightly high so they potentially interfere with the indicators but I'll see how they go before next steps. BUT why does SWM specify that the spots should be mounted on top of the bar? If I hang them underneath, there wouldn't be an issue....


Onward!

They might interfere with the bodywork at full lock?

Also - most light units have a small hole at the bottom to allow air-flow (otherwise the gas inside the light would get very hot and potentially burst a weak point in the structure*). These holes are at the bottom so that rain can't flow into them, (they also let condensated moisture run out via gravity effect). So - putting a light on the underside "might" cause the hole to be in the wrong place (depends on the light, the position of the hole(s) etc).



* It's a bit more complex than that... The unit won't be totally impermeable to gas, so hot air will escape via whatever weakness there is in the seals, meaning that when the light is off, the cooling down will cause the internals of the light unit to be at a lower pressure than atmosphere (less volume of gases) and that will cause the unit to "suck in" gas from outside, which will probably be moist/humid and thus introduce h20 into the unit, which will then condense on the unit's colder materials, and form water droplets, which (because there's no hole) can't escape, and thus will build up until they cause electrical shorts, or corrosion.

[JamesL]

Interesting, got it and thanks for that - I'll take a closer look at some stage. For now mine can stay the 'right' way up and I'll see how it goes. I think they'll go on upside down without fouling anything, and on the last Blue Bike I had them upside down with no problem... But past performance is no guide and all that so I might just have been lucky! J