Nothing wrong with shining a light on the fender at night….
I think your onto to it Tom.. the bulb is blowing the light forward, as the old style blew the light around the reflector and that Projected the light…
Sneezles61

All interesting experimentation, thanks.

Hi Tom P, thanks for your thread regarding your headlight woes and how you solved each issue as you came up against it.  Also the great quality of your pics and that you posted them successfully.  I remember you said it was only your wish to have a headlight for daytime use hence no worries on the poor beam spread. Got me thinking though about the science of light reflection, focal length etc.  Consider a regular two filament headlight bulb and the typical difference of position of the filament coils within the bulb (maybe 2 - 3mm difference) yet the huge impact this has on the main/dipped beam spread.  Makes you realise it is a precise process so I reckon you've done a good job to get the pattern shown in your video. Add to this the fact you're working with 6v (rather than 12v) the results are never going to be spectacular.  One technical query Tom regarding your voltage regulator, shown in post #24.  It looks to me as though you rubbed away the frame paint to ensure a good earth for the metal body of your regulator with the fixing bolt but then also added a 'second' earth via the little jumper wire across to another part of the frame.  Surely you don't need that jumper wire as the frame is the continuous earth? Anyway thanks again for a most "enlightening" thread..  Andy.

Andy, I was actually wondering if I could put a standard 6 volt tail light through the reflector opening and position it similar to the original bulb. Or even an LED that was positioned back further where the original filaments were. I might experiment a bit more, just for fun. In fact I was thinking of trying to fit a tail light bulb with two filaments into the original H4 base that I still have, after breaking the glass to remove it

The reason I added the extra earth wire was because it was so close to that ground screw, and I live near the ocean where things corrode very quickly. That way if the connection between the regulator and the frame itself becomes compromised, at least I'll have that earth wire, and it only took a minute to make.

Tom I don’t think that would work because the bulbs are vacuum sealed the filaments would burn out

Ht1kid, I didn't mean opening up the bulb and then trying to fit it into the H4 socket, I just meant trying to adapt it to the H4 with the bulb intact. However measuring the bulbs I have, I don't think they would even fit through the opening of the reflector.

After long rides, my battery seems to be running down. It's only a few months old, but I'm wondering if that regulator is causing it to charge a little bit less? It's been getting to the point that after about 20 miles, if I have the daytime running lights on, when I hit my brakes the tail light actually gets dimmer.

 I think the charging circuit on these is not very robust in the first place, but I don't want to take that regulator out. What I've done for now is just unplug the tail light, which is the blue wire. I put a female bullet connector on it just to insulate it, and have been riding it, and the battery seems to be staying up now with the headlight on. After all, the headlight is running directly off the magneto, so it shouldn't be draining the battery.

Just talking to my neighbor, he suggested running a wire from the headlight back to the tail light, and that would work. However I think I'm going to keep it as is, because it's more important to me that when I hit the brakes a bright brake light comes on. If I have a very bright tail light running off the magneto, when the brake light comes on it won't be that noticeable.

 

Hey Tom which wire are you using out of your charging circuit ( stator) there is a daytime and nighttime wire to charge your battery 

Does your tail light run off the battery. Ours in nz run off the mag with the headlight. Brake light is off the battery of course. I'm sure we used to run 10/3 bulbs 10 brake & 3 tail. Next bulb up was 21/5 or was it 17/5 which was too much for the little battery around town braking a lot. What headlight wattage do you have as with regulator to save bulbs you can go down in headlight wattage, still have bright lights & have more left over to boost the battery. If ya stuck with a sealed beam headlight then i guess you can't go doing much. We had the advantage of going from a 25/25 to a 20/20 or even a 15/15 & get bright lights & more charge to the battery. Just to explain--lower wattage on mag lights gives a brighter light--to the point of blowing--but saved from blowing by the regulator. So now i'm guessing a bit & not sure if the regulator would release the extra available volts to boost the battery but i hope it would. Sorry if that reads confusing--confused me lol.

My Ct1c USA taillight runs on DC