LED brake light

[ForcedFour]

I finally finished my new brake.

A bit of cutting and a bent sheet of aluminum:







and a video to show case how it looks

http://youtu.be/xnsxHOtaQR0

[BrianKD]

That looks very slick. Are you using the OEM plastic light cover? Are those red LED's or clear?

[ForcedFour]

I cut the OEM light to make it shorter and flipped it upside so that it would sit almost flush with the plastics. The metal plate is tapped where it folds over and holds the cover on with 4-40 screws (the cover is counter sunk so they sit flush).

The LEDs are red, I made a little control circuit for the lights. Using two LD1084 adjustable voltage regulators I set a lower voltage on the running light and full voltage for the LEDs on the brake light, work's alright and the light is sensitive to voltage fluctuations from the bike's alternator (the running lights work at around 9.1v where as the brake light works at 11.2v). They get a little toasty (the regulators) so I had to mount a heat sink on them.

[Dresnewtoy]

Very creative.

[NorwayGT1]

wish you had a pic with the leds on man! and that looks like it was a pain in the *** lol
good work though

[ForcedFour]

Ask and you shall receive

It was a bit of a pain but it was a fun project.

[BrianKD]

I don't know if that would pass inspection in PA. We need the clear part to point down on the license plate.

[NorwayGT1]

dude that looks bad ass! supper bright!

well done 

[ForcedFour]

Brian, its definitely not DOT legal but I added those plate bolts with built in LEDs as well.  The brake light doesn't light up the plate much at all any more.

[adidasguy]

You can buy LED license plate lights. I have few in my parts box. Most places that sell license plate mounts also sell LED lights for the license place. You can mount a couple white LEDs on the bottom of the housing so they light up the tail light.

FYI: LEDs are more current controlled than voltage. Dimming LEDs is usually done by pulse modulating them. You can get cheap LED drivers that do that and also can do full dimming. That would cut down on your heat problem.

FYI: My tail lights are smoke color from Lights4All (ebay, in Germany). There tails are European approved, and have DOT designation as well. They do have while LEDs pointing down to light the license place. The motorcycle tail light replacement LED lamps from SuperBrightLEDs has white LEDs for the license plate, if you just want to replace your two incandescent lamps.

[ForcedFour]

The only problem controlling these LEDs by pwm is the fact they are 3w LEDs, each series of them uses 750mA. The circuitry is far more complicated to have an adjustable PWM and I did not have the right IC's to build a circuit for that at home already. You could use a 555 timer with a pretty large mosfet to control it, you would still need two regulators though to provide power to the ICs and another to make sure the LEDs get the proper full operating voltage. I was trying to keep costs down, this whole thing only cost me 15$ for the LEDs them selves.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/180711847543?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1497.l2649