Building a diesel bike presents lots of electrical issues. Firstly, you have to rewire the bike. The alternator from the diesel engine must be used to power the bike... and that won't be easy - the diesel's alternator is nowhere near as powerful as most regular bike alternators.

The key lies in getting the most out of what you'e got. So once again, you learn to be more efficient... in every way.

Light Emitting Diodes

The running lights on a standard Royal Enfield - like most bikes - are filament bulbs. This means they are very inefficient. All together, brake, running lights and turn signals will use more than 21 watts of power. I needed to get that down to a watt or two. Solution: LEDs.

But most LED bulbs for bkes and cars don't put out as much light as filament bulbs, and I was determined not to sacrifice safety for efficiency. So I ended up building some of my own.

I was able to purchase two 36 LED arrays and wire them together, along with a high power single LED to light the license plate, and glue and solder them together to fit in the exisitng taillamp. The result is nearly twice as bright as the original - and draws well under 1W of power compared to 21W!

Turn signals I built using a single 36LED array each. I added bar-end turn signals on the handle bars, thus increasing the number of turn signals I had, as well as their brightness. Finally, I added an LED "light bar" on my sissy bar.

The result is at least twice the visibility - at one-tenth the power.

Note: for LED turn signals to work, you must also switch to an electronic flasher unit.

THE HID HEADLAMP

Next stop... the headlamp.

My weak diesel alternator, at high rpms only generates approximately 48 watts of power. The average motorcycle headlamp uses 60 watts. Clearly, there was a problem.

And LED headlams - while they are in the works - are neither commercially available - or legal, on motorbikes.

Solution - a xenon high intensity discharge headlamp. This light, while using a ballast to crank the voltage up to 23,000 volts (!) actually consumes only 35 watts of power while delivering FOUR times the brightness.

Installing an HID unit proved somewhat complex; with a ballast, a relay, and an ignitor, it takes up a good deal of space. Here's what my electrical toolbox now looks like, with circuit breakers for the meter circuits, computer circuit, accessory circuit, and HID circuit.