Can I power a light with my powerjet?

it will turn a light bulb on but it will throw a beam, but it would get through a tech at a race that requires a working front light

I have a friend who did that on his RM.

Will this harm the bike? How many watts does it put out? I was thinking that it was ~5 watts?

Interesting idea... I also think it would be cool to power some goodies off my electrical system (home made timers and stuff). Does anyone know what voltage (12?) and/or how well regulated it it?

Thanks,
Andy

I wouldn't mess with it to tell you the truth. I would rather think of adding a lighting coil to the stator plate if there is room. Have you even checked to see what kind of voltage it produces? you might not have12 volts there to begin with. My guess is that the power jet circuit does not have much current<watts > and is variable voltage<low rpm low voltage high rpm high voltage > which opens and closes the powerjet. Not a particular nice scenerio for running a headlight.

In my opinion the best thing for a head light <and most other electrical applications> is a generating system that is strong enough to have the wattage and voltage needed at the lowest possible rpm and then the voltage regulated to dissipate the excess voltage at throttle< to prevent burning things up>.
If the electrical accesories and wiring are in good shape they are only going to recquire a certain amount of wattage < for the voltage it was designed for> and only draw that much in amps to operate efficiently. But if the voltage gets low creating a demand for more amperage things get hot looking for those watts ,smoking wires and switches that are engineered an designed to the skimpy side<not really the hardware themselves being cheap but laying them out with the bare minimum in mind. Also if the voltage gets too high everything works too well <brighter or faster> with the likeliness of burning out the accessory.

"But if the voltage gets low creating a demand for more amperage things get hot looking for those watts ,smoking wires and switches "

jmics, I agree with most of what you said. However, I don't understand this statement. If I'm not mistaken, a simple circuit (like a light) can't "look for watts." I think the light would just be dimmer at low voltage. By Ohms Law ( I(amps) = Volts/R(ohms)) if the voltage drops the current will also drop. Rearranging the equation to figure for watts (W = (volts)^2/R) shows that when the voltage drops the actual watts will drop much more. Am I missing something here? I guess this is a minor point, but I'm just curious about it.

My above question assumed that there was a successful lighting system running off the PJ carb. I would be surprised, since I agree that it "probably" doesn't put out enough current and it might be a pain to splice into the right line.

Ok if you ran say a 55W light @ 12V that would draw 4.58 amps. The solenoid that operates the power valve is around 5W or .42 amps. And remember that the lower the voltage/current the larger the conductor size needs to be to carry that load or else it will overheat and fail (burn thru). Ohms Law is used to determine the resistance of a given conductor and to calculate voltage drop over a given distance. Any way I don't believe the wiring harness would handle the added load. Get the lighting coil.

for the sake of easy math lets say you have a 100 watt bulb running on 10volts recquiring a 10 amp draw thru your wiring. Now if you have that 100 watt bulb running on 5 volts it is going to try and draw 20 amps, atleast that is how I believe it works.
I do know that if your car battery is low and you are constantly cranking the motor over the solenoids get extremely pitted and it takes less cranking time to smoke the battery wires then if the battery was in good shape. Now the light bulb you want to burn may not have such a great draw on it as this extreme but the wrapping of your coil does not contain 4 gauge wire<or whatever the gauge is> in it like your battery to starter has.