Fuzzygalore.com The Saga of my Denali D2D LED Lights
When riding at night – being able to actually, you know, see? …is a pretty big plus. Since I have the Void Rally coming up where I will be spending a large amount of time riding in the dark, it seemed like a no brainer to get some extra illumination. So a few weeks ago, I got a set of Denali D2D LED lights for my Tiger.
Wiring the lights up required pretty much taking all of the plastic bits off of the bike and running the wiring under the tank and into the block under the seat. So, doing all of that neatly required a couple hours. It wasn’t a hard job, it just took some time because we were doing it for the first time. When I say “we”, I mean Kenny. My job was to be annoying and hold the gas tank up, which I did flawlessly if I do say so myself.
Imagine our surprise to find that at the final stage of installation, screwing the second lamp onto it’s pivoting bracket – that the screw wouldn’t bite. It just spun in the bracket. What the heck? The light seemed to have a machining defect that wouldn’t allow it to slide fully into position and sit flush against the bracket, making the screw too short. Great.
We sent an email to Twisted Throttle where we’d bought the lights and explained what was happening. They requested some pictures of the light showing the issue, which we sent and they sent us an RA for the single lamp. They said it was no problem, apologized for the trouble and let us know they’d send us a new single light.
After checking to see that they received our returned light, there it was: Oooooh, sorry. Backordered. The availability showed a date of mid-October. That wouldn’t help me on my rally but there was no point in freaking out. What can you do? Stuff gets backordered.
Kenny, my angel, decided to take one for the team and buy a second set of lights to put on his Tiger. The thought being, he would order a set so I didn’t have to be crippled by my backordered light. He would give me one lamp out of his new set and then take my replacement when it came.
Three days later, Kenny’s set of lights showed up. He took one of his new lamps out and installed it on my bike. Angels sang, birds tweeted, all was right in the world. Mostly.
A few days after that – my original replacement light actually showed up, too. Kenny had already gone through the process of setting up the wiring on his bike and put the bracket in place so that when the replacement light came it would be a basic plug in with all of the leg work already done.
You Have Got To Be Kidding
The replacement light would not slide fully into the bracket and the screw wouldn’t bite.
I think it might have taken every once of self control that Kenny had for him not to go all Hulk Smash! and splinter the light on the garage floor.
Instead he did a little grinding, a little drilling so that it would attach. A “light tap” for its high tolerances just didn’t cut it.
Fine, whatever. We now have two sets of working lights.
Both of which apparently have an intermittent slight flicker in one lamp when running on the low beam. Oh, COME ON!
What would cause the lamps to flicker? Is it worth sending the lamp back again? For $350+ bucks you’d think I wouldn’t have to even ask this question.
Kenny took a video of his light flickering while the bike was idling in our garage and sent it to Twisted Throttle. They sent him another RMA.
We’ll see if his replacement light has any issues.
What a pain. 
[UPDATE]
Based on Ken’s questions in the comments – just a little recap in case anyone has suggestions:
- Both of our Tigers have intermittently flickering lights.
- 1 Tiger has 2 lights that flicker, the other, only 1.
- Flickering occurs at idle when the bikes are running.
- Flickering occurs at varying RPMs while riding.
- Flickering only occurs on the ‘low” or 40% beam, high beam does not flicker.
- Flickering does not occur when the key is switched on but the bike is not running.
- TT suggests a “light tap” will allow the screw to seat… eh, that wasn’t the case for us.
[UPDATE #2]
To recap, my Tiger has 2 light pods that pulse or flicker intermittently. Kenny’s Tiger has only 1 light that flickers, the other light is fine.
Tonight, Kenny took his 1 good, non-flickering light and put it on my bike. It did not flash on my bike either. The “good light” operates as it should, no matter where it is plugged in, on either bike.
My bike with Kenny’s ‘good light’ and one of my original flickering lights on the low beam:
[UPDATE #3]
Okay, so… A couple phone calls and emails back to the guys at Twisted Throttle~
The first tech suggested that they would sending us a newer version of the harness, which apparently uses a plastic box instead of metal and has new innards. He thought that might help kill the issue. The suggestion was that the metal box might be causing some problems.
After talking with the tech, Kenny took a look at our bikes once more and found that his Tiger already had that updated plastic box harness, my Tiger did not.
Another follow up call with another tech letting them know about the harnesses. During this call, the tech mentioned that the Tiger was known to have a dirty power issue causing problems with these lights. Uh, what?
If there was some knowledge of a “known issue” why wasn’t it mentioned right out of the gate? Or noted on the website? Or why would there be RMAs for parts to be returned or someone saying they’d send new wiring harnesses? If it is a known issue – surely there would be an appropriate place to mention a workaround on the website or on one of the previous calls or emails, no?
So, yesterday Kenny did a little testing. The light only flickered on low beam when the high beam wire to the controller was wired in. If the highbeam wire was not wired in, the light would not flicker on low beam.
The Fix:
Wiring a relay off the headlight to the high beam power on the controller. That’s it. A hack fix putting a relay in front of a relay (in the controller).
Were you hoping for something more complicated? 
Let There be Light!
Tonight, my Tiger’s Denali D2D lights shined on low beam with no flicker. I could have wept. It was the greatest day of my life, since last time.
So, through all of this, the folks at Twisted Throttle didn’t give us a hard time, they were pleasant, tried to be helpful and they were really good with being open to returning things. The techs took time to talk things through with us when we called.
When all is said and done my only complaint is really - if there was some knowledge of a known issue with the Tiger, just include what needs to be done at the time of install somewhere. It would have saved a shitload of time and troubleshooting.
Comments
When it comes to lighting and electrical I’m pretty conservative. You either have to spend the time and get everything perfect the first time (assuming you have perfect parts too) or knowing my luck I would get cut wires, electrical leaks, and who knows what else. Aside from my main bike all of the others have had the lighting kept stock, I even removed extra tacky lights from a Harley I used to own. It was tacky as hell I tell ya!
Unfortunately I lack Ken’s self control and go straight to yelling out my war cry, grabbing a hammer and going homicidal-Thor on things. Very therapeutic.
Yeah, for $350 those thing should work flawlessly right out of the box.
Maybe just return them, if there’s time, and get some trailtech lights?
They should just send me a set that works as advertised, no extra drilling required
Before you get to excited about considering TrailTech … I went that route. Several problems, the biggest of which was the lights failing after only a few days of use. Each light had what appeared to be a meltdown inside the housing. After three lights sent as replacements … one at a time as they failed. TrailTech kept blaming the wiring. I finally asked for a refund and went with the Mini MotoLights. Connected them to the same wiring harness. They work fine.
Thanks stinks, Claye.
I don’t think that we’re going to be getting a full refund anytime soon – so buying another brand of lights really isn’t in the cards for me right now.
This is so frustrating, just reading it makes me want to throw things out a window. You really wonder why it is so hard to make a quality product! This conversation seems to come up a lot with motorcycle gear. You pay a premium on a lot of this stuff and you would expect to have a premium product without any issues. But I find it is rare to receive any product that doesn’t have some weird flaw in it or defect.
I think part of it is due to the fact that a lot of motorcycle stuff isn’t used by the masses. Most of the people we ride with are maybe 5% of the riding population. Higher end manufacturers don’t get a huge amount of people using their stuff day in and day out to make sure it is up to snuff.
I am no fan of twisted throttle. I had to make a purchase there recently for an item no one else seems to carry and felt dirty for having done it.
I built my aux lighting setup from pieces and parts available on the interwebs and my local electronics store. Will show the set up to you in Allentown, if you wish.
I really haven’t had to deal with them before, personally. Not sure if my other half has. I have to say they’ve been pleasant enough and didn’t give us a hard time or anything, but… not sure I could recommend this product to someone else.
2 set of lights: 2 badly machined mounts, 3 flickering lamps. Not really good averages.
Does this flickering only occur at idle? Or at higher RPM?
Both.
It will occur intermittently when the engine is running, sitting at idle in the garage or when riding at varying RPMs.
The lights do not flicker when the key is on but engine is not running.
The same is true for both Tigers. But one Tiger has both lamps flickering, the other Tiger has 1 lamp flickering.
Further – on mine, if I swap the light between sides, the flicker follows the light. On hers, both lamps flicker randomly in unison. Neither flicker when the lights are running full bore.
The more I think about it the more I’m leaning to the control box being the problem, and apparently what I am seeing on the web suggests this is occurring on quite a few folk’s lights.
Aha! I’ve just Googled the auxiliary lights in question looking for a wiring diagram and found the following, on this page… http://www.twistedthrottle.com/trade/productview/6158/ – I draw your attention to the bullet points in the installation notes, specifically:
We have noticed that the interlink and associated channel on the LED pod have very tight tolerances. It may be that you find that the interlink does not want to seat. In this case apply a light tap to the interlink to slide it in far enough to allow the M3 bolt to gain purchase.
And:
Be certain to plug the light switch into the proper port and the light pods as well. Premture failure can result if done improperly.
^^ Worth checking everything, then…
Without seeing a wiring diagram yet I’m going to guess that the flickering is related to the ‘dimmer’ unit, and that dimming is accomplished by switching the LEDs on and off rapidly rather than just reducing the supply voltage (because that’s not how LED’s work), interacting with the power supply from the bike. But perhaps I’d better wait until I /have/ looked at a circuit diagram before I float any more dodgy theories…
Just get some smiley face covers for them and call it a day.
Regarding the interlink – yeah, a little tap wouldn’t do it. After giving a good couple of wacks with a hammer to get them to seat, on the first one I ground a bit out of the channel to get a little more wiggle room, no go. On the SECOND set that wouldn’t seat, I drilled out the seat of the set screw a bit which got me a little more room to get the screw to bite.
Regardless – I SHOULDN’T HAVE TO DO THIS ON A NEW ITEM I PURCHASED. Certainly not requiring me to take pictures of what wasn’t working before they’d issue an RMA. Certainly not to then get the replacement, which had the same problem, requiring me to MASSSAGE it in to place. Certainly not to see that not only was that an issue, the lights are now not functioning correctly.
Yeah. Not Happy.
Well, I have the beginnings of a theory… could I ask to exactly where on the two bikes (both Tiger 1050′s, right?) you attached the ‘ignition on’ trigger wire that feeds into the control box?
Power coming off the headlight, and was wrapped/soldered versus the chintzy screw on wire clips they provided – said theory would have to explain why only 1 light flickers on mine (other is absolutely fine), and if I move it from the left side to the right side of the harness the flicker follows the light. On Fuzz’s BOTH flicker. Oh, and now that we’ve started searching around the web, apparently this is not an isolated problem and it’s happening to other folks on other makes/brands of m/c.
Hmm… the one that doesn’t flicker, does it get brighter/dimmer as you would expect, depending on whether you have engaged full beam or not?
What I think I can explain is why the flickering would vary with RPM, appearing to come and go as the revs rise… the theory goes that the onl;y way to ‘Dim’ LED lighting is to ‘flicker’ it deliberately at high frequency. Obviously, if you turn an LED on and off very rapidly so that it is only on 50% of the time, it will appear half as bright as the same LED on all the time. So, when the lights are in ‘dipped’ mode they are actually already flickering, but too fast to be perceptible to the human eye. Then if you superimpose another ‘flicker’ at a different frequency over the top of the ‘dipped’ flicker, one caused, say, by connecting the sensor signal that turns the power on and off to the control box to a ‘dirty’ half-wave rectified or choppy 12v volt power source, you will get ‘interference patterns’ or ‘strobing’ between the two flicker frequencies where the harmonics intersect, rather like the way that a rotating wagon wheel in a cowboy flick appears to strobe as the wagon rolls at certain speeds, but not at others, when viewed at 50 or 60 frames per second on your TV… if this is the problem, then the solutions are not exactly technical rocket science – basically either finding a sufficiently stable source of ‘ignition on, bike running’ DC power to connect the sensor lead to, or sticking some analog smoothing components into the sensor circuit so that it doesn’t matter any more that the sensor source is clean. And none of it is your problem to solve, though if you could solve it, you’d probably be feted by your fellow customers. I still can’t find a wiring diagram for the control box on the interwebs, FWIW…
Welp – and I preface this by saying a big thanks for even bothering to think this one through – a couple more oddities: the flicker is not consistent – it flashes randomly, and not in a fast or slow pattern of any kind – it flashes a bit bright, then settles, a bit bright, settles, etc, and not on an interval; it has nothing to do with the throttle, neither the flicker speed nor quantity of occurrence increases or decreases in relation to throttle; the flicker is like a FLASH, where a brief pulse of slightly more than 40% strength occurs, then goes back, it occurs regardless of moving or sitting still, and does not occur more frequently if you tap or shake the light itself.
That would seem to me to be consistent with the kind of strobing effect I’m discussing, actually. It’s not a mechanical thing, so it’s not affected by wiggling wires, it would be caused by the interference patterns between two square waveforms, the waveform of the invisible but very high frequency flicker that the control box uses to ‘dim’ the LED lights, and the waveform that is (this next bit is more in the nature of pure conjecture) being generated by the control box turning the lights on and off, or from dipped beam to full beam, in response to what it perceives is the ignition control line coming on and off or the full beam circuit being energised momentarily. So if the headlight circuit you have tapped into with the ignition sensor wire was half rectified, that would obviously put a square waveform onto the ignition sensor line, turning the auxiliary lights on and off at the frequency of the AC output by the alternator, which is RPM dependent. But as far as I know, it isn’t (half wave rectified). But it MAY be that the headlight wiring runs a bit close to the HT leads, and that there is an induced waveform superimposed on the DC in the headlight circuit. It might also be that the contacts in the headlight relay flutter a bit in response to engine vibration, generating a high frequency square waveform in the headlight circuit. Either way, a few smoothing capacitors on the end of the sensor lead, or possibly connection to the back of the ignition switch rather than to the headlight lead, might solve the problem. Or if it doesn’t solve the problem, at least prove that I’m typing gibberish
.
Cool video
. Weird symptom. But yes, entirely consistent with the interaction of two different high frequency sources. And that ‘striping’ that occurs when you video the light output? That looks like a classic interference pattern (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interference_%28wave_propagation%29) caused by the interaction of the camera’s frame rate (i.e. 50 or 60hz) and the ‘by design’ high frequency on/off of the dipped spotlamps. Here’s a cheesy video I found demonstrating the same effect using a slinky (!), tuning forks and an oscilloscope. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrpQX5uKxQY
It’s interesting that the one lamp that doesn’t have that weird ;ooks-like-beating thing going on is also apparently, just from looking at the video, brighter than the others. Almost like it isn’t ‘dipping’ at all. It would be interesting to compare the output of that particular spotlamp on both high and low beam to see if there is any difference. If there isn’t, then the reason that particular spotlamp fails to exhibit the weird flashing symptom that the other three do in ‘dipped’ mode is that it is never _in_ dipped mode; that means you have two problems – one causing that weird flashing, and another causing one spotlight to malfunction to smooth out the pulsing that is supposed to cause it to generate less light output in dipped mode and that, when fixed, will allow all four spotlights to malfunction in the same way as a result of the first problem. Which may not be much of a win
. On the other hand, if there IS a difference between main beam and dipped, and it turns out that that that one spotlight performs perfectly on either channel of either controller, and yet the other three spotlights continue to misbehave however you switch them around, you would have to conclude that you have three bad spots, where bad = ‘some weird electronic manufacturing or design snafu means that the bad pod is responding to two different high frequency inputs when it should only be responding to one’.
Is any of this making any sense? It’s not meaningless drivel before it leaves my head, honestly
.
Hi Ken-
The “good” light operates as it should no matter where it is plugged in, on either bike.
Well then, I think you can pretty much eliminate a wiring or installation issue. I assume that the PWM is generated in the control boxes when the lamps are running in ‘dipped’ mode (err… http://arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/PWM ), but… err… you don’t happen to have an oscilloscope laying around, do you?
I postead a reply to this but it seems to have hit the bit bucket… I reckon it is pretty clear that you are looking at three faulty/sub-optimal spotlight units, and now I’m wondering what the fault is… http://arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/PWM describes how Pulse Width Modulated dimming works, and I’m guessing that the PWM dimming circuitry is in the ‘control unit’ rather than in the spot lamp itself. If there are just two wires coming out of the control unit and running to each spot lamp, that would seem to confirm that supposition. So then you are left looking at wave interference between the individual flickering LEDs within each spotlight unit. Which could surely only happen if mismatched components have been used within a spotlight assembly… so according to that theory, the only difference between the spotlight that works and the ones that flicker is that in the one that works, all the individual components happen to match each other well and flicker in time with each other when fed a Pulse Width Modulated supply…
This looks like there is a failure of the filtering of the power supply line and that you are seeing flickr when the PWM signal burbles or wiggles in response to variance in the DC rail. I would guess that the problem is that a filtering capacitor in the light itself has failed, was not installed or is soldered poorly.
A capacitor at the light itself will smooth and average the PWM signal and quite likely cover-up these irregularities in the power signal to the LEDs. PWM is simple in theory but hard to do in practice on an electrically noisy environment like a bike.
I had a look at these at a bike show the other day, they seemed a bit dimmer compared to the standard lights they had on show, will def dig a bit deeper, thanks for the post.
Hi Gary- The video is showing them on at the low (40%) setting. They are much brighter on high and do not flicker or pulse then.
Woo! And indeed hoo! Sorted
. And it looks like I might even claim to have been at least half right, based on the fact that it was a dirty feed on one of the signal wires… 