[Primetimeandy]

I saw on another forum someone recommended bi-led lights from aliexpress. You get fog and high beam in a single package with a cutoff for the fog.

This store on aliexpress has many options:

https://www.aliexpress.com/store/group/3-0-Inch-Bi-LED-Lenses/912264243_40000000627726.html

In particular, I'm interested and might try this option:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003639139794.html

I guess one issue with these types of lights is that ideally fogs would be mounted as low as possible and ideally driving beams would be mounted high. I would probably just mount these high.

I'm not sure if I would go with white fog/white spot or yellow fog/white spot. When I was out riding last night I was paying attention to other bikes I saw on the road and a couple of riders passed me with bright yellow lights and the yellow actually caught my eye more than white lights, but I guess my goal here is more for me to see than to be seen and white would probably work better for that.

 

[Primetimeandy]

I've ordered these lights in the white/white config:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003639139794.html?

and these fork mounting brackets:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005271920079.html?

I will let y'all know how it goes in a month or so when I hopefully have them installed. I plan to just wire the fog into the headlight circuit and the highbeam into the highbeam circuit with no extra switches or relays etc.

 

[Primetimeandy]

If those lights consume what power they state they do, they will fry your electrical system. At best you will not be able to run any other accesories while using the lights.

However, the Chinese often grossly overstate specs by adding things that shouldn't be added together and choosing the most favorbale way of stating something without explaining how they got the number.

Good luck.

Thanks for the advice, I didn't consider that. They claim 70 consumption per light with the highbeams on 140w total. so 11.6 amps at 12v.

I'm going to have to do some learning about bike electrical systems to see where the limits are.

I would appreciate any further advice on the topic.

The owner's manual doesn't state and specs for the charging system, just "Three phase A.C. generator"

The battery is listed as 12v 28.8kC (8 Ah)/10 HR, but I think the charging system output is the critical spec right?

 

[Primetimeandy]

I would want to know the amp draw of the factory aux lights mounted on the crash bar. At least that would give a safe limit. Problem is, I haven't found a dealer that has ever seen these lights.

You can find a manual for the OEM foglamps at the link below, but there are no specs listed. €638.24 !! that's over $930 Canadian for some likely made in china lights. Yikes. Some useful install tips in that manual though.

LED fog light for Suzuki V-Strom 800DE 2023- Original accessories

You want to be safe on your Suzuki V-Strom 800DE even in bad weather? Then the LED fog lights are the perfect accessory for you! With these original…

www.rwn-moto.com

 

[Primetimeandy]

Found the dl800de charging output on the Suzuki USA page!

• Charging output is 375W @ 5,000 RPM.

 

[Primetimeandy]

I'm glad you let me know about these limitations.

I've been wanting a clamp meter for awhile, so I just purchased an Ideal 61-747 for a good deal on amazon. I will check the current draw of the lights before installing on the bike.

I'm thinking some ideas might be a relay to turn off the OEM low-beam when the highbeams are on. Or maybe a dimmer for the aux lights?

Hopefully the power consumption is a bit less than advertised on the lights that I bought...

 

[Primetimeandy]

The lights use two led elements, a 6000K white and a 3000K yellow. Try wiring them so that only one element is on at a time. That may bring the power consumption down to half which is still higher than I would recommend. These lights use chinese led elements. They burn many more watts for the same output as more efficient american CREE elements.

For everyone else we have lights and a wiring harness that work extremely well on V-stroms. A DL800 lightbar is coming very soon.

Thank you. I ordered the model with 6500k for the wider "fog" beam as well as 6500k for the high beam spot. I was thinking it would be best to switch off the OEM lowbeam when on HighBeam mode because the OEM low is so wimpy, but it will come down to the real power consumption of the lights.

I will check the current consumption of the lights that I ordered when they come in and report back. I will also try to see if I can get current consumption for the OEM lights too so that I can make the best decisions about which combinations of lights to have on at one time while respecting the limits of the bike's charging system.

 

[Primetimeandy]

@Primetimeandy
What can be done to fix the poor lighting system on this bike? The intensity of the light is much less than almost all other vehicles at night and not safe.

... just don't ride at night, it's dangerous; wildlife on the move, potholes that you can't see, gravel, glare etc

Riding is dangerous mate... Strong lights level the playing field. Strong lights allow you to see "the potholes you can't see" and to see the animals lurking in the ditches, gravel etc.

I love riding at night and don't want to be a victim of a crappy oem lighting system.

Why come into a thread about improving the lighting system on the bike to recommend that people don't ride? If you have anything to contribute about improving the lighting, I would love to hear it, but I'm not sure that this is the place to push anti-night riding sentiment.

 

[Primetimeandy]

no problem mate enjoy your night rides , maybe you live where you don't have much wildlife, here in Southern Alberta you don't see bikes ridding at night, too many deer, coyotes, skunks etc jumping from the bushes.

...and I did contribute to your question with LED bulb suggestion

I was riding in Alberta last week actually. Wildlife is always a concern. I had a moose cross in front of me in Manitoba, I almost pegged a deer at 11am in BC. I could refuse to ride, or I could find ways to make riding safer such as brighter lights so that I can see hazards approaching the road.

I do not beleive that the 800de uses the type of bulb that you were suggesting could be replaced. According to the owner's manual all of the bulbs are proprietary chip-on board designs. I could be understanding it wrong. Do you know for a fact that the dl800de uses an H7?

 

[Primetimeandy]

Is the high beam an H9?

I'm also interested in a Kisan modulator now that you've put me on to them. I don't have plans to dissemble the front end to see all of the wiring for a few weeks, hopefully someone else might have it apart and can share some info on the connectors before then.

I'm going to shoot Kisan an email to see if they know what might work.

 

[Primetimeandy]

I talked to Kisan many times to get the correct info. The CAN-bus was a question that is still unknown, but now that the stock high beam won't be used, it doesn't matter to me. They don't think we need a CAN-bus resistor even if we do put the modulator in the high beam. They are only$15ish if you need one. The Pathblazer they told me to get is the P115W-A2 to work best with LEDs. Just cut the H9 connector off and splice it into the wiring of the crash bar mounted LEDs. Simple enough.

Thanks for the model#! I will wait to learn more about can-bus. According to the suzuki website the bike does use a can-bus, but I'm not sure if they would also use it for the headlight wiring. I will need someone smarter than myself to figure that out. The owners manual does not describe that the bike would have any feedback to the dash if a light goes out, I'm not sure if that would mean anything in relation to whether or not the lights are encorporated into the canbus wiring.

 

[Primetimeandy]

I found this photo on suzuki australia's website. That I believe may suggest that the headlights are not connected with the canbus wiring harness.

 

[Primetimeandy]

Have you adjusted your headlights?

..Tom

Haven't had time for evening bike work lately, I will report back when I do.

 

[Primetimeandy]

Have you adjusted your headlights?

..Tom

I adjusted my lights today. The highbeam and lowbeam were off to the right a bit. It was a frustrating task. A socket was too tight to get onto the adjuster. I would recommend a ratchet wrench in 8mm or 5/16", 5/16" actually seemed to fit better for some reason despite being a metric bike.

The manual has incorrect information. It states things like "High Beam Up and Down: Turn the adjuster clockwise or counter clockwise." For 3/4 of the adjusters the adjustment seemed to correspond with the way it is written in the manual. Up/Down - Clockwise/Counter-Clockwise, or Right/Left - Clockwise/Counter-Clockwise. 3/4 adjusters were correct as written, the lowbeam right left adjustment is opposite what is stated in the manual. Left is actually clockwise... I really screwed myself up by thinking the adjuster was slow, but I was actually jacking the thing miles in the wrong direction. It's hard to see what you're doing because you need to stop and pick the bike up off the side stand and level it to check your progress.

Anyways, the lights are still weak AF. They are ok for riding around urban environments, but not ok for dark highways. They lack intensity in the beam. Streetlights cast a stronger light on the road. Looking forward to slapping some Aux lumens up front.

 

[Primetimeandy]

I added the fork mounted aux lights today. They are the ones that I mentioned earlier in the thread from aliexpress. I really like the lights! They make a huge difference. These lights have a low beam with cutoff as well as highbeam spots. Both are excellent and the 6500k white/white version is almost an exact match to the color temperature of the stock lights, they blend seamless into the stock lights, but fill in much more intensity. They have greatly improved the lowbeam and highbeam for me. The highbeam spots are really nice. Two big circles out into the distance that let me see much more of what's coming up.

I ended up buying the matched wiring harness to the LED lights from the aliexpress store that sold the lights. They have a link on the page for the lights which leads to the wiring harness.

The wiring harness from the vendor basically was a direct connection to the battery and then a switch to control a relay to turn the lights off completely, and a switch to control a relay to turn the high beam on or off. I really didn't like the idea of needing to use a seperate switch to turn lights on and off or high/low while I was riding. I ditched the switches and cut up the wiring harness. I bought a fuse distribution block off amazon and I used one of the relays from the light wiring harness to switch the entire fuse block on and off with the bike. I used the parking light wire under the stock fuse block to switch the relay for my new fuse block. The low beam light is wired to the fuse block. So now when the bike is switched on with the key the low beam aux lights come on automatically.

I wanted to have the highbeam of the aux lights controlled by the stock highbeam switch along with the bike's highbeam. I used the other relay from the light wiring harness to control the power for the highbeam by tapping into the bike's heambeam switch circuit at the stock highbeam relay. I'm not an electrician or even very smart at all, but I somehow managed to figure this out by playing around with a multimeter for way longer than it would have taken someone else...

This (yellow wire with white stripe) going into the stock relay at the tail of the bike is switched to +12v when the highbeam switch is activated and can be used to control a relay based on the stock highbeam switch.

According to my clamp meter, the entire fuseblock pulls 9.69A with the auxiliary highbeam and lowbeam on and the gps charging. Luckily it doesn't draw all of the 140w advertised for the lights. I went for a ride tonight in the dark and the lights make such a great improvement. I am very happy now and happy that I did this. I would recommend these lights to anyone who wants a dual LED aux light with a low cutoff and a high spot. During my ride the voltage indicator was showing the bike charging around 14.1 volts with all of the lights on, so fingers crossed I haven't exceeded the capability of the stock charging system. It seems stable and ok, but I will keep my eye on it.

 

[Primetimeandy]

The 9.69A was checked with the bike off and the battery down a bit because I had been tinkering with the engine off for awhile. It was more like 9.69A @11.5v

 

[Primetimeandy]

I was working with the assumption that if it was pulling let's say 115w at 11.5v, that when the bike was running and charging, that the total power in watts would remain the same, but the higher voltage would allow it to achieve 115w using less amps. I will put a clamp on it with the bike running to check that theory. I don't think it's using 165 watts.

I just double checked and the fuse panel pulls about 9.5 with the bike running as well, so yea its about 135w-140w range I think.

The battery is staying charged fine. I drove an hour this morning.

 

[Primetimeandy]

I contacted the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and filled a formal complaint.

Let Suzuki fix the lights.

Report a Safety Problem | NHTSA

File a complaint with NHTSA if you experienced a vehicle, tire, car seat or equipment safety problem that could be a safety defect.

www.nhtsa.gov

I fully agree. The stock lights are good as markers and decorations only, they don't illuminate the road so that the rider can see what's coming up.