Installing some LED lighting on a Troy Bilt 2690XP

[l008com]

I know this is the "lawnmowerforum" but is it ok to talk about other power machines besides lawn mowers?

If so, I want to upgrade the lighting on my snow blower. Like so many, it has that one incandescent light bulb that does almost nothing.
First, I need to know how much "free electricity" I have to work with. Given that the oem headlight is incandescent, if I even know it's wattage, I could probably find some LED lighting that is within that wattage, that is 10x brighter. There are lots of small 18W offroad LED lights that I think would work nice.
Also, is the OEM headlight 12v DC or 12v AC? If it's AC, i'd have to wire a rectifier inline too, right?
Also does that bulb have a name or number or type? If I'm going to do this mod, I think it makes sense to pop a weak LED in the OEM headlight slot anyway just so I have some light shining on the machine itself. If a rectifier is needed, and I put it inline behind both lights, then it should be fine I think.

Note: This blower does not have a battery. It's pull start or 120vAC start.

This is what the device has for an OEM headlight bulb: https://www.ereplacementparts.com/lamp-p-1303289.html?osCsid=i1sm6sb9jrc2o6to9jtvdjat87

 

[ILENGINE]

Take the bulb out and see what number is on the side to confirm. the bulb in the picture in the link shows the 1683 bulb which is 28 volt. Most likely the headlight on the blower is powered by a AC circuit. If you have a meter with a HZ setting you can see what the output is if it is AC. With the engine running at full throttle the frequency should be close to 60 if AC output. Keep in mind that what they call DC is really half wave rectified AC. So the so called DC output will still have an AC frequency of around 30 hertz.

 

[l008com]

Take the bulb out and see what number is on the side to confirm. the bulb in the picture in the link shows the 1683 bulb which is 28 volt. Most likely the headlight on the blower is powered by a AC circuit. If you have a meter with a HZ setting you can see what the output is if it is AC. With the engine running at full throttle the frequency should be close to 60 if AC output. Keep in mind that what they call DC is really half wave rectified AC. So the so called DC output will still have an AC frequency of around 30 hertz.

Looking at the LEDs I had in mind, they do say 10-30v input. So even if they are 28v, they would still run ok off a rectifier, you think? I'll try to poke around with it today and see what I can come up with.

 

[bertsmobile1]

Running LEDs directly off an alternator is not a good idea.
Remember they are DIODES not globes.
They do not like fluctuating voltages as you get from a rectified AC direct output.

 

[tom3]

Might look into two 12v LED units lights in series? Hard to say how much current is actually available, depends on load to control it I suppose.

 

[l008com]

Fun story, I just looked at my account history looking for some other thread, and turns out I made THIS exact thread 2 years ago and completely forgot about it. Oops.

Anyway, if the lights won't like the "pulsing" power, personally I'd rather avoid installing a battery. But wouldn't a very small capacity be enough to smooth out the power? Given how common an upgrade this is, someone must make rectifier/capacity combo boxes that do output nice smooth DC power?

 

[ILENGINE]

in order to have smooth DC you need to be able to rectify both the up and down cycle of the AC output out of the stator, or full wave rectified. And you may still need the battery to smooth out the bumps and surges. The headlights only operate off of one half of the stator therefore the best you will get is half wave rectified so you are sending up, off, up, off to the headlights. So in reality you would be turning a LED on and off at a very quick rate.

 

[bertsmobile1]

A Cyclon 5Ah battery runs a 6V 2 CREE LED headlamp for 20 hours .
How much light do you need ?
If you go 12V then a 2.5 Ah battery will do around the same time with a 12V Headlamp.
The lights will work better running off a battery total loss than running off the 1/2 wave alternator pulsing into the battery.
A very large number of vintage & classic motorcycles run total loss LED lighting from very small batteries, but don't tell the AHMA concourse judges that.

Look up LED motorcycle stop lamps, you should be able to find plenty of drop in globes that will fit your existing lamp.
hen you need to decide if you want to use the origonal reflector in which you need a backward facing wide view angle globe or if you want to us the globes own reflector & diffuser in which case you ned a forward facing globe with a 270 degree view angle.