Adding a Helle 500

[Rasputin]

I ran a pair of HID bulbs mounted in HELLA housings on the mile eater. I have a lower than stock wattage headlight as it is only there to not get a ticket for no headlight. Single 55 watt riding light should be fine as my HID's draw 35-40 each. My suggestion is to connect the wires up and turn the light on and off with a multi meter on the battery. You can see if you voltage stays high enough to keep battery charged before you go drilling mounting holes.

You might want to shine those lights against the wall and see what kind of pattern they have. Some off roads do not have a cut off and throw a full circular beam which will not be appreciated by any oncoming traffic.

Really good advice and concerns stated!

[RS Thornton]

check before mounting it

I ran a pair of HID bulbs mounted in HELLA housings on the mile eater. I have a lower than stock wattage headlight as it is only there to not get a ticket for no headlight. Single 55 watt riding light should be fine as my HID's draw 35-40 each. My suggestion is to connect the wires up and turn the light on and off with a multi meter on the battery. You can see if you voltage stays high enough to keep battery charged before you go drilling mounting holes.

You might want to shine those lights against the wall and see what kind of pattern they have. Some off roads do not have a cut off and throw a full circular beam which will not be appreciated by any oncoming traffic.

[TopCatGr58]

Hey Rover,

I, too, have done the LED conversion, but I didn't have a RADIO...do you have the specs/current draw of the radio?? I ran a PAIR of 55 watt EACH aux driving lights, and never had a battery fail....but like suggested, I only turned them on when I was actually running down the road at night, I didn't use them for stop and go daytime stuff....except for the occasional FLASH to cages when approaching intersections for added visibility attempts.

T.C.

[Prisoner6]

Too costly. I paid $5 for 2 hellas and a powerful hand held spotlight, and I would like to use one hella for a high beam driving light.

That sounds like a "Hella"-va deal!

(Sorry, couldn't resist)

[rover]

li

Too costly. I paid $5 for 2 hellas and a powerful hand held spotlight, and I would like to use one hella for a high beam driving light.

[natemoen]

The standard headlight is a 55 watt low beam and a 65 watt high beam. 55 watts is a hair over 4 watts. You only have 20 amps total to use.

Plenty of people have used driving lights like that. I would say that as long as you turned it off at low speeds, stop lights and such you would be fine.

My question to you. If you are changing things over to LED, why not just get LED driving lights?

[rover]

I have converted all my lights except the headlight and instrument lights to LED. Now I came across some Hella 500 off road halogen lights that draw 55 watts. My charging system is fine, I installed Geezer's rectifier. I am running a radio, I don't think it draws much. Do I have enough amperage to run 1 Hella 55 watt in addition to the headlight? I can mount it on the windjammer above the headlight, but I don't want to drill a hole there if the Hella don't work out. What do you think?