Let there be light???

[wags450]

I have an 08 YZ450F and Im going to be doing a ride with my buddy and my dad across some parts of AZ. I was wondering if there was any kits or any companies that make a head light of some sort for it. Any suggestions we will be doing some dawn/dusk riding it would be nice to have head light. I know my girlfriends dads bike doesnt have a battery and his headlight just comes on once it starts. Something like this possible??

[grayracer513]

There is no practical way to install any kind of generator driven lighting system on a YZ450 unless you want to spend about $1000 on the project, which will involve changing the crankshaft, among other things:

https://www.thumpertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=696590

Alternatives such as rewound YZ450 stators that include lighting coils for use with "baja kits" have proven over and over to be very unreliable in terms of delivering either ignition or lighting current, and are notorious for leaving people stranded.

Trail Tech makes kits like these: http://trailtech.net/8in_race_lights.html

that can be mounted easily and run directly from one or more lithium iron phosphate batteries. and can produce 2-3hours of light without recharging.

The unfortunate and undeniable fact is that the flywheel in your YZ is smaller than your gas cap, and will never produce an amount of electricity adequate to run lights reliably regardless of what you do with it.

[wags450]

that what i was afraid of. thanks for the help on this. I think Ill either have to get some of the trailtech helmet lights or do the 8" like gray suggested or both

[OUTERLIMITS]

You are going to need to go to battery power. The good news is that you can still have kick ass lighting, but it's not going to be as cheap as just buying a stator and bolting it all together. I guess you need to ask yourself how much light do you need. Just enough to get by or something really bright. You can get one of the 10 watt led helmet light setups from Cyclops, Baja D, or Trailtech and either helmet or bike mount it and end up with something better than the lighting that a stock enduro bike comes with for about $300. I have the Cyclops and it runs at least 6 hours on the battery and the battery is pretty small (will fit in your shirt pocket). Here is a review and some pics that will give you an idea of what this little light puts out.

https://www.thumpertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=817387

Another option would be to build an hid main headlight for roughly $140 (easy to piece together) and power it with either the Cyclops stack pack battery or the one that Trailtech sells. They are both approx 6.5-6.6 ah Li batteries that will run a standard 35 watt hid for about 1 1/2 hours. More than likely you'd need 2 batteries and a charger. That's the expensive part. You'd have to check both of those sites, but I believe the batteries are a bit over $100 each so you're talking about an outlay of maybe $400.

It would be interesting to see what the new YZ's are capable of powering with the ignitions for the FI.