Well, I'm no electrician and the Tiger has a Canbus system that you can't just go chopping into. But, there is a solution. An outfit in South Africa makes a dohickey called a ezCan and Denail also sell these with under the Denali Cansmart moniker.
A quick look at NZ (and Oz) retailers and they all seem to advertise Denali stuff but don't seem to stock it (and their prices are eye-watering). I did a net search and discovered abikething.com and a ton of really helpful videos by the owner including the below one where he kitted out a new Tiger with all the bells and whistles:
His prices were also a lot cheaper (still not a cheap farkle) and he had stock. A couple of clicks and about a week or so later a box turned up. Some cheap Ali-express mounts also turned up around the same time so that was handy 😉
I'd bought the Deanli branded unit as the wiring leads that come with it plug directly into Denali stuff. And this is where I hit a problem. My Denali's are reasonably old and come with a 2 pin plug whereas the new ones (and the Cansmart loom) come with 3 pin plugs, bummer.
A few emails and I was back in business. I just had to cut into the super nice Denali lead and wire on a 2 pin plug. Routing the cables was pretty easy with some of the plastic removed and then it was ready to hook up the laptop to the Cansmart and tell it what it was plugged into it and how I wanted it to work.
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| The Cansmart uses the bikes OEM switchgear |
This ended up being child's play with the only issue being a laptop falling off the bike onto the concrete floor...it seems to be working though...
The video shows most of the trickery that all works from the bike's standard switch gear, but here's a list of how I've set it up (the software allows you to play with lots of things and the Cansmart has 4 outputs for 4 devices/sets of devices):
- the Denali's are not active automatically (good for WOF time), but a button press turns them on
- with the bike's lights on dip and the Denali's active, the Denali's come on at about 30% brightness (adding a second set of DRL's) and the headlight is actually brighter
- hitting high-beam gives maximum output
- flicking an indicator on turns the Denali's off to ensure that the indicators are visible. I could have actually wired the lights independently rather than as a set and then only the light on the same side of the bike would go out when the indicator was switched on. I opted for simpler wiring.
- hitting the hazards alternates between spots and indicators - should be fairly obvious...
- flicking the high beam 3 times (actually tricky on the Tiger) causes the lights to flash
- Hitting the horn makes the lights flash
Pretty cool, shame about the video:
You may have also noticed another farkle in the shape of a decent horn. The Cansmart is setup to control Denail Soundbomb horns too. These are made of gold too. So, I found a knock-off on Temu and ordered another, different mount from Ali-express (after watching the first video in this post I had a fair idea what I needed).
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| I wonder how long it will last there? |
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| A bolt just asking to be trimmed... |
The hardest part was getting the horn in place and being able to tighten mounts etc. I had to try a few different ways but finally got it in and secured. Routing the wiring was easy and then all I had to do was connect the laptop (no dropping this time) and tell the Cansmart that it had a horn connected. Done, time to film that video...
Oh, and I couldn't ignore the T7...
These are cheapies like on the S10. They're damn good though and I won't cry as much if I break one...
Only issue is that they are not hooked up to go on/off with the high beam which is what I need. The T7 has a weird system where the high beam trigger wire only put's out something like 0.9v. This isn't enough to drive the relay (well, that's what I think the issue is) and apparently if you tap it and use it for the trigger then you can even damage the electrical system - I'm not too keen on that.
There is however a way to do it which I am cautiously investigating.
And you can get a EzCan/Cansmart for the T7...
I really miss the square Denalis that I had on my AT.
ReplyDeleteI was looking at the eZcan last week but baulked big time at the price(especially once you add the actual lights). Thanks for the link, I'll check it out as the STD lights on the Desert X aren't great.
P.S. The Cansmart is 90 quid more than the hex ezican for the DX?!! WTF? 🤨
DeleteWas that from abikething or locally? In the video he actually talks up the Ezcan as having great included wiring harnesses. I like that it is easier to use non-Denali lights and such.
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