[mtrueblood]

One of my pilot lights burned out.  The bulb looks like anything you'd find in a 99-cent China-made flashlight.  However, after trips to Pep Boys, Advance Auto Parts, Radio Shack, and a couple non-chain stores, I still had no replacement.  So, I bought the $18 All-the-lightbulbs-you-may-need kit from CMW.  
I was reading about LEDs on the Internet, and my impression now is that LEDs are available with the same base as the incandescent bulb, and that it's just a matter of popping out the old one and popping in the LED.  Is that true?
My neighbor's son works for Advance Auto Parts and he was telling me about a "194 bulb."   I'm not sure what that is.
Has anyone found an LED "bulb" that can be inserted into the pilot light base?

Thank you.

Michael Trueblood
Pittsburgh, PA

[Rick Sperko]

I have replaced mine with LEDs, there are bunch of threads, I believe they are BA9s

http://www.enfieldmotorcycles.com/forum/index.php/topic,1141.msg11396.html#msg11396

-Rick

[bob bezin]

the slightly longer ones from the autoparts store will  fit. .i have replaced  both my pilot lights.

[Chasfield]

Did mine too. They original  incandescents were only 3W each, or something, but two of them replaced with LED ones having the same bayonet base gives you half an amp back for more important tasks such as getting a spark out of the coil.

I also put an LED stop/tail light bulb and during my rewire, I made up some LED illumination for the instruments, to save a few more precious watts. The latter mod was only a partial success because my instrument illumination now comes on dimly when I apply the brakes. It seems that the tail lamp feed floats high when the brake light is activated, which is sufficient to feed back the few milliamps that the instrument illumination needs.

[Tiny Tim]

A 10 m.m. LED (colour of your choice) will fit snugly into the rubber housing of the Pilot Light.

You will need to solder a 1K ohm resistor in onl leg of the feed to each LED.

There's no heat dissipated to talk of so the fitting into the rubber is not a problem.

They are polarity concious but won't blow if you get them the wrong way around so try them one way and reverse if required.

Available on Ebay or Radio Shack or any half tidy electronics store / site.

They should be pennies each. Cheap as chips.

[The Garbone]

You will need to solder a 1K ohm resistor in onl leg of the feed to each LED.

I bought a set of LED on ebay. But did not use a 1k resistor.  I understand the need for one on the turn signals but why on the pilots?

http://shop.ebay.com/items/?_nkw=ba9+led&_armrs=1&_from=

I got some ultra bright ones and they came in handy when my headlamp went out recently.

[mtrueblood]

Tiny Tim,

Thanks for the alternate suggestion.  Everyone else has written that it's just a matter of pulling out the existing bulb and popping in an LED "bulb."  Obviously, that's an easier option, and I would probably go that way.

However, your suggestion brings up a couple more questions (from me, anyway).  I took the little metal ring off, and then I took the little light cover off.  Can the rubber housing be pulled out to expose the wiring behind the bulb socket?  And is there enough slack in the wiring back there to pull the bulb socket forward so that wires can be cut and spliced?

Thanks.

[Chasfield]

I bought a set of LED on ebay. But did not use a 1k resistor.  I understand the need for one on the turn signals but why on the pilots?

http://shop.ebay.com/items/?_nkw=ba9+led&_armrs=1&_from=

I got some ultra bright ones and they came in handy when my headlamp went out recently.

Any plain LED would blow out with 12v applied directly. The semiconductor junction only wants to drop about 0.6v across itself and offers little resistance.  A current limiting resistor is added in series to mop up the other 11.4 volts. Automotive LEDs are often sold with resistors built in and red and black leads soldered ready for connection. I did my instrument lights with some of these these.

Of course, LED replacement bulbs ,with regular bayonet mounts, have current limiting resistor packs built in.

With LED turn signals, if you don't install an appropriate electronic flasher unit, you have to add some kind of parallel-connected high wattage resistor so that you get sufficient load to make the original unit work properly.

(The actual LEDs in the turn signals will have current controlling series resistors somewhere in the line or they too would have a very short but bright working life.)

[geoffbaker]

Hope we're not confusing mtrueblood here!

To recap... any 9mm BA9 (which fit the old T3 1/4 bayonet fitting on old Brit bikes) LED will work without alternation because as Chasfield says, they have a limiting resistor built in. If you make your own using raw LEDs you must include a resistor as Chas did.

The ultrabright ones include their own buck/boost circuits which limit the current precisely. These (in the 3W and up range) are improving but are still not easy to use in turn/tail applications as they get hot, and are polarity specific. I blew one because the copper "tongues" on the tail light bulb housing were loose and allowed it to short.

Again, any LED you can buy at a store that has the right fitting (BA9, BA7, 1156 and 1157 are all you need on these bikes) willl work fine without any additional circuitry with ONE exception, LED turn signals need a digital flasher, which is also cheap and available at most part stores. www.superbrightleds.com is a good source for bulbs.

The only other issue to be wary of is that many of the LED cluster bulbs that have 30 or more LEDs may not fit in the turn signal housing or tail lamp housings because the LED cluster is too tall or wide to fit.

And don't expect them to be brighter than what you have... they wont be... maybe in another year or so they will have ones that are brighter than stock.

[REpozer]

I installed a .50 cent light , after my pilot light burned out. Its a little bigger and brighter. It give the bike a slight Cyclops look, book still cool.

[Tiny Tim]

is there enough slack in the wiring back there to pull the bulb socket forward so that wires can be cut and spliced?

If you remove the headlamp from the nacelle and remove the chrome outer cover for the pilot, as you pull the pilots forward out of the nacelle, you should be able to trace the corresponding two wires inside the nacelle. The go into bullet connectors which can be pulled out, thus allowing the pilot to be removed from the nacelle complete with its two wire connectors.

Reconnection is the reverse of the above

I'm sorry to have confused anyone. As stated by others, LED bulbs need no resistors (effectivley, they're built in). Plain LEDs do need resistors.

[mtrueblood]

Thanks, again.  

Generally speaking (and maybe this will wrap up this topic), am I correct in thinking that all things electrical are powered through a wiring harness (big wires) that is connected directly to the batter's positive terminal, and that they are turned on/off by relays that are operated by switches/buttons that are connected to the relays by smaller wires?  So, even those tiny pilot lights are getting 12v from the battery?

(I understand that the lights are on when the key is in and turned on, but for the sake of this question, I'm grouping the ignition with switches/buttons)

[REpozer]

A good place to start is to look at your wiring diagram in the back of your owners manual.

[geoffbaker]

In the broadest sense, yes.

Power comes from the alternator which is rectified (switched from AC to DC) and regulated (kept from exceeding around 14.5v) and this power is then connected to the battery, which will receive a charge above idle speeds and will drain at idle.

All power except for the headlamp lo beam is then fed from the battery.

The headlamp on older bikes (can't say about the new ones) actually is wired direct to the AC for the lo setting and to DC for the high setting. Go figure! (It was a cheap and dirty way for the Indian manufacturer to meet always-on headlamp laws in the US).

The turn signal circuit has a relay and a flasher unit as well. Again, I'm speaking for older bikes as mine is a 2000. Newer ones may use more relays etc to handle higher power loads.

[mtrueblood]

A good place to start is to look at your wiring diagram in the back of your owners manual.

REpozer,
I'm sure you're correct on that.  However, even with my drugstore reading glasses, I have a hard time with wiring diagrams.  I'd do better with steam lines or water pipes.

[REpozer]

Yep, not a very good picture, electricity and water lines do share the same basics,that is path of lest resistance and  pressure .

[Geirskogul]

Headlight on new bikes (at least in my 2009) is properly regulated and goes through a proper switch (once you remove that jumper - bah), and even works with the bike off.  No need to have the bike running to use the headlight.

Just changed my pilot lights and brake light to LEDs.  Now I can plug in something like a GPS on trips without being in the drain all the time.

[Tiny Tim]

Good tips for wiring diagrams for the uninitiated:

1. Get it photocopied and blown up as large as you can without distorting it

2. Get a couple of copies

3. Take the component you're interested in e.g. the pilot light. To get it to work, trace one wire all the way back to the battery or the earth, then do the same for the other one.

4. Concentrate on one wire at a time. Try not to look at the diagram as a whole.

5. Use a highlight pen if you want to