Hiya I have been looking into ways to improve the electrics on the various Stornello’s I am working on. I know from some limited experience, the lights on my Turismo are absolutely awful if riding out of town. The other bikes I am working on have similar systems so will be little better.
I have investigated scooter electrics as they appear to be very similar, but all have subtle differences that make it very tricky to adapt them.
I could by a Vape products kit from Poland, but at £450 each, it is not a cheap solution
I am thinking of trying a bit of DIY coil winding. Does anyone happen to have any old dead Stornello stator coils lying unwanted in a drawer and be prepared to exchange them for some beer vouchers? I’m reluctant to pull apart a working one (working as well as they ever do!)
Thanks.
…Beer vouchers, I remember them, just! 
Hi Don,
If your only concern is the lights, have you tried fitting LED lights front and rear. I have just replaced the bulbs on my Airone with LEDs and I am very impressed by the improvement. AND very little current draw, so you won’t see the worrying charge warning light come on when you’re riding in the dark.
Much cheaper than replacing all of your other electrical components, and not a big outlay if you find it’s still not good enough.
The stornello lighting is 6V AC direct off the alternator so unfortunately this is not an option. One possibility is to dump all the volts it can produce into a battery via a modern voltage rectifier / regulator and then run 6V LED’s off that.
I would like to go 12V on one of the bikes so I can fit a GPS speedo but that needs a supply anywhere between 9 and 32V, not 6V.
Doesn’t quite answer your question, but it might be worth giving these folks a call;
Thanks I did give them a call, they can rewind a coil to give 12V, but want £150 to do one and couldn’t give any idea of the sort of wattage output I can expect.
Update on this. I had the coil rewound by West Country Windings as a single AC coil with two wire output (not using the chassis as an earth) They only charged £60 for a straight forward rewind. I have connected the output to a cheapy chinese 12V rectifier / regulator and connected the output from that into the battery. I haven’t started the bike up yet, but even just kicking it over, I am getting a decent output from the regulator so hopefully it should work well.
Hi Don,
I visited a friend last week who had just completed the restoration of a BSA Sloper from the mid twenties. He wanted to replace the 6 volt bulbs with LEDs but could not find any here in South Africa (maybe they are available elsewhere). He ended up installing a 6 volt DC to 12 volt DC converter and used 12 volt LEDs and everything worked fine. I found the converter at RS components and it only costs a few Pounds. Maybe something to consider in the future? Unless, of course, there is a downside to going this way.
Cheers
Phil
Paul Goff does 6V LED’s if your mate wants to go down that route.
http://www.norbsa02.freeuk.com/goffyWhyNotLEDs.htm
My Velo Venom was converted from 6 to 12 volts. The same dynamo had an improved toothed belt drive fitted with smaller pulley to spin faster. The internals of electro-mechanical regulator were replaced by solid state 12 volt regulator fitting inside OE box.