Ok, i am rebuiling an 87 warrior and the ligths just had to go. They were all up front by the bumper, and i could not put up with that. I got a new style frotn hood. NOw i have to find out some lights. I was thinking of the sotck lights but the bracket itself is $75 bux. I am thinking about geting the 400ex ligths for a total of about $200. Would this work?

 

Ther are two things that you should be sure of:
Will there be a way of mounting them?
Can the stator handle the power?

For the second one, find out what the stock wattage for the light are, then see if the 400ex is the same or more.If the 400ex is rated for more watts, it will work, but will not be as bright. If it is less, you will blow out the lights.

 

Wow. It's funny that somebody would mention this. I had plans on buying a set of 400EX headlights for my Warrior, too! I work for Ford as a clay modeler(sculptor). I was going to take some clay home, use my portable clay oven, and model up a bezel to harness the new lights. I would weld up some type of bracket to hold the 400EX's lights firmly in place under the bezel. With clay, it's pretty easy to make a plaster cast, then pop out a fiberglass part.
You just lit a fire under my A$$, man, I might have to start my project now.[img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-shocked.gif[/img]

 

Yes the stator could handle this. Both 12vt/30/30 bulbs in each. we would cut the 400ex wire end off and solder and heat shrink the old warrior ones back on. Since this was an 87, there were no lights up by the handle bars, just by the bumper. UGLY. We would get some welding done for about 50 bux. Both light units coat around 200 bux. How trick would that look?

 

For the second one, find out what the stock wattage for the light are, then see if the 400ex is the same or more.If the 400ex is rated for more watts, it will work, but will not be as bright. If it is less, you will blow out the lights.

Actually, too much wattage and you risk "burning up" the stator due to too much load against it. Smaller wattage bulbs won't blow, they just draw less electricity due to more internal resistance - the voltage is the same so it doesn't matter if they're 1 watt or 30 watt bulbs, they won't blow because of underrating.

This concept is the same as screwing a 60 watt bulb into your bathroom light socket after your 100 watt bulb gets old and burns out. The 60 watt will operate just fine, it just won't be as bright & won't use as much electricity as the 100 watt bulb.

However, using this same example, if you screwed a 300 watt bulb in, you risk catching your house on fire since the fixture and wiring likely wasn't setup to support that much current draw.

 

86atc250r
You are not entirely correct. I work alot with car audio(not much of a difference except its sound instead of light). you can have, lets say, 2 300 watt subs(600 watts total)hooked up to an amp that only pushes 400 watts, the subs will not draw more power and fry the amp, they just won't run to their full potential. I've hooked up a 200 watt sub to a small sony bookshelf stereo which moves 45 watts, it just wasn't as loud as it would be. Same with lights, you could put a 45 watt bulb in a lamp that calls for a 100 watt, it won't blow up, but it won't be as bright. It is the same thing with a quad's lighting circuit. The problem would be if you hooked up a 200 watt sub to a 400 watt amp, you'd blow out the voice coil on the sub(trust me, but it looks cool though).

 

I think you're confusing a lot of different issues here after re-reading your posts a couple of times. What you said in your last post is fairly accurate (a 45watt bulb can replace a 100watt unit with no ill effects), but I think you're still confused (your 2nd post contradicts your 1st as well as itself), so I'll give a fairly detailed explanation.....

Speaker systems are an ENTIRELY different deal and can not be equated to light bulbs as far as wattage rating goes (unless you are driving light bulbs with your amplifier).

A lightbulb is powered with a known, fixed voltage.

A speaker is powered by varying voltage at varying frequencies, so the wattage rating on a speaker is a rating of how much power it's voice coil can absorb. Since an amplifier powering a speaker is sending it dynamic voltages (depending on the size of the amp and the volume setting), the power (wattage) being delivered can vary greatly. Higher power amps will send higher voltage to the speaker which will also force more amperage to be passed.

Since there are inductive and mechanical forces in effect, speakers also have a varying impedance depending on input frequency, throwing another monkey wrench into the whole calculation...

Ohm's law tells us wattage is calculated as voltage multiplied by amperage, you can easily see why this "wattage rating" could be exceeded with a high powered amplifier.

The wattage rating on a lightbulb however, is giving you different info. Since it is being powered by a known, fixed voltage (be it 12v automotive/ATV or 120v home) and has a fixed resistance or impedance, the wattage shown on the light bulb is a measurement of how many watts that bulb will use, not what it will handle. Higher wattage light bulbs (unlike higher wattage speakers), have lower resistance and therefor draw more current and use more power. Using a higher wattage bulb is very similar to putting 2 ohm or 1 ohm speakers on an amp designed for a 4 ohm load (which, as you should know, CAN very well blow your amp).

As a small, off topic side note...

Taking an 800 watt rated subwoofer and a 100 watt rated subwoofer - powering them both with 50 watts - the 800w speaker won't necessarily be "quieter" than the 100w unit. The 800w rating is simply a rating of how well the voice coil is constructed and can dissipate the heat associated with high wattage it also should take into account if the speaker's suspension/spider can handle the load.

Efficiency comes more into play on the loudness issue. Speaker efficiency is measured by driving the transducer (speaker[img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif[/img]) with 1 watt, with a microphone placed 1 meter away. They typically fall in the 87-102 dB range. The higher the number, the higher the efficiency, and in theory, the louder the speaker will be when driven at a given wattage.

There are many more factors, but that is WAY beyond the scope of this post.

 

Ok, the warrior staro can pull off the lights. Now, back to the topic. Would this look ok? I am reying to give my warrior a taste of its own. Also, if i got a good welder to do this do you think it would almost look stock?