"Green light changer" / traffic light magnet
 

I just won an Ebay auction for one of those magnets you put on the bottom of the bike to trigger the traffic light. Ebay # 180299048723

I should have it by the end of the week and we'll see if it works or if I just pissed away $17.44 :idk:

There is one light on my way to work that will NOT change when I ride up on the bike. I even tried dragging my side stand as I sit there but no luck.

I also checked with the a PA State Police officer to see if it's legal in PA for a motorcyclist to go straight on a red light after a certain amount of time waiting for a light change. It's not but he "unofficially" said just go across if it's safe :whistle:

What do you fellow enthusiasts think, will it work or did I waste my money?

Jeff

survey says... YES



everyone I've ever heard from that's gotten one said it didn't make a bit of diffrence.

i just make sure its safe and go after waiting more than a few minutes. two scenarios.

1. a cop will have no idea what you are talking about because they dont ride, and will more than likely just let you go considering you were trying to be safe.
2. the cop rides and can relate, and lets you go.

usually in heavily trafficed areas its not a problem, cause you'll get cars behind you that can creep up and trigger it, and in the boonies, well, who the hell cares nobody's around.

Bummer. I even went on the PennDOT website and "reported" the light. I got an email with a case number and actually thought something might happen.

Four working days later I got another email and all the report stated was " problem resolved". No summary or explanation of how they resolved it nor was there any difference in the road surface. I tried accessing the original case number but it said "case closed" and the email address they sent it from wouldn't accept responces. :panic:

I still fucking sit there at the red light waiting for four wheeled vehicle to trip the light :zowned:

:lol: well there isn't much they could do I don't think... cept maybe move the sensor closer to the surface... but it may require a certain depth... :idk:


I was told the law in Oregon was 2 signal cycles... I usually wait 1... if it passes my light once... and no traffic is near me... I'm going next chance I get. I'll take the chance of a ticket and plead my case... haven't been pulled over yet for it... though doesn't happen too often

Those new-fangled bikes with their aluminum frames and engines couldn't trip a light if they tried. Both my bikes have good ol' steel frames. And huge, steel centerstands hanging below the engine. I trip lights 10 feet before I get there.

Seriously, how does the magnet attach to the bike? Do you have a steel or aluminum frame, or does the engine hang from the frame? Here in Colorado, most of the traffic light sensors are close to the surface and have a bead of silicone caulk covering the wires. I stop so my engine is directly over the center wire or at an intersection of wires, and the light will change right away.

We have a few lights here that wont trigger from a bike. One was at the end of the road I use to live on. I got to the point that I treated it as a stop sign. Only got stopped once and was let go with a warning. I never antied up for any magnets. Not that big an issue for me.

Yay! Something I know something about... I just installed a few of them a couple of weeks ago. Well,they probably increased the sensitivity of the loop. Or they went and checked it and it worked to their standards. I used to carry a speaker magnet in the belly pan of my bike but it was a lot bigger than that crappy little magnet they sell. I've gotten them to trigger just by putting my kickstand down.

dear god... is it getting cold in here... fuck... I think this place is freezing over... Tigger speak'n in facts...

Oh hahahaha gosh you are funny "moonshot"... We've had this argument before. The loops are basically an electromagnet with a sensor that detects changes in the field. Ferrous metal will of course have an effect,as will a large enough outside magnetic field. Man,for a magnet the size of the ones they sell on EBay to have an effect,it would be impossible to transport as it would to to everything metal within 10'.

:lol: yeah I've seen some pretty "intresting" ideas on e-bay... there was one website that included a wire magnet that, i'm not shitting you, was designed to drag on the ground under the bike!!! I was speachless

Just get a big ol' neodymium magnet... you'll pick up shit off the road too... :lol:

Like this:

http://www.unitednuclear.com/magnetfull42.jpg

yeah, i bought one of those trigger things too way back when. haven't noticed any substantial difference. oh well. lesson learned.

There is a light here that sucks. It won't change for me at all. Piece of crap.

Jeff,
Unfortunatly I think you just wasted your money. I have never heard of one of those working. Here is something I had a traffic engineer for the city of Jax tell me in one of the classes I was teaching.

First things, if your city uses the sensors in the ground, try and position your bike in the top left corner of the sensor. You can usually see the cutout in the ground. Try and get as close to the top left as you can without going past the cutout line. Thats where the sensor is strongest.

Second thing, with your bike running, and in the upper left corner of the sensor, hit your engine start button once or twice. It won't hurt anything at all. The switch will send enough of a signal for the sensor to ditect. I was told this about a year ago. It has worked for me 99.9% of the time since then. I used to have lights that would never turn, no matter what I did. Now I try this method and like I said it has worked for me 99.9% of the time.
Good luck and let me know if it works for you.

A little trick the MSF coaches taught me. If you can see the sensor in the road, put your bike in neutral and touch your side stand on the ground where the sensor is. It should cause the light to sense you and it should change.

That is a great idea!

Hell,I'm gonna try that tonight,along with a magnet and a strip of metal.

I've tried that...doesn't do shit around here.

It's worked for me on occasion. It all depends on how deep they buried the wire,the size/shape of the loop,where the sensitivity is set on the sensor unit,etc. In a lot of cases,a bike is just barely out of sensing range and just a small increase will trip the system. Even those goofy small magnets could work in some cases,I guess....probably not tho',sorry bro. Oh I forgot,the age of the loop makes a big difference as they're making them a lot more sensitive because of the way cars are being made these days. I've had to replace them at dealerships because they wouldn't react to new,smaller,less ferrous cars.

I normally don't have a problem, but the kickstand thing has helped for me in the past.

You can make an even better signal than the starter, because mine is on top of the engine. In grade school, we made an electromagnet by wrapping an insulated wire around a bent nail, and attaching the wires to a battery. It would pick up a bunch of nails. How about making a small electromagnet under your engine? You could hook it up to a relay and switch just for traffic lights.

Quick patent that idea!!! Seriously....that's a good idea!

I've heard that before... just hit the starter while your at the light... I've done it a couple times... nothing... but it could be because mine was too far away :idk:

The intersection had me sitting again this morning. It must be an older one as you can't see when the wires/sensors are located. My suburban trips it about 50' from the light but I'm not sure if it's left or right side of the single lane :idk:

I've tried the kick stand drag too with no luck.

My bike is a 1993 Kawasaki ZR1100 so it's old school steel frame.

Thanks for all the replies. :cheers:
Jeff

Don't have many of them... but the chop has no problems.

My bud from NY sells a light trigger... says they work great and he don't sell shit that don't work.

http://www.valueteck.com/

Ordered! We'll see... I think it's basically NW's idea packaged! It would be hilarious if I open the unit and it's a steel rod with wire wrapped around it!!!

Feel free to to post in this thread on how it works.

I plan on it! The guy just called me and thanked me for my order and chatted with me for a couple. I told him I was "good friends" with GasMan! I'm sure I'll hear back from that one!!! He seemed like a genuine guy,so my hopes are high!

i'll have to try the starter switch thing sometime. theres a couple times recently where i had to wave a cager up into one of the hoops cause it wasnt reading the blade

Don is his name... he lives in NY and came over my house about a month ago. We had a wrench day, he was in canada camping off his HD and drove about an hour or so out of his way to visit with a bunch of big dog guys... aka basically me wrenching on a bunch of bikes as I described in my lift thread...

He's good people...

starter button works 4me almost always. really rare when it doesnt.


however, i got a 400dollar ticket for waitin at stoplight for two circulations of the light, at 330am, no traffic, one lane each way, and then treating it like a stop sign. the cop was standing at a starbucks (didnt think it was a real cop, just security) and he must have ran, got in his car, and blew thru every light because he caught me 5-6 lights later (the rest were green, i was goin 30-35mph) and pulled me over. said i ran a red light, i told him why, he didnt believe me, told him i'd been told by cops it was ok (it was my daily route to work, occasionaly a cop would be behind me, they would tell me to go ahead and go thru it. said too bad, tell it to a judge, heres your ticket. i said "this is fucking ridiculous" (i was respectful til i saw i wasnt gettin out of it with just a warning. then i was pissed.

he tried to tell me i coulda hit someone-
i replied its 330am, no traffic, and i looked both ways twice.

coulda hit a paper truck
me-its wednesday, that auto trader guy delivers on thursdays, and the reg paper dont pass thru til 430.

dude didnt care.

i never wanna say cops are dicks, but at that moment, that cop, was acting the part very well.

ok rant over. anyway, the starter thing works, however all the prob lights i have on the gsxr, i never had with my kawi, which is really really similar to the o.p. bike. mine is longer and lower tho, maybe that helped it. closer to the sensor, more metal

COPS are dicks!!

There, does that make you feel better? I got a couple uncles that are cops and my brother is a Sherriff.

I would have told that cop to go fuck himself. Its cops like him that give the rest of them a bad rap.

Never heard of the Starter Trick but Ill keep it in mind...Sounds Liek it shoudl work in Theory.

I got pulled over the other day...in a TV LIVE TRUCK. Yeah. I flat out ran a stop sign. Didn't even see it. The cop was a total prick...but ended up letting me go.

The ebay item arrived today. If it works I'll be completely amazed. :idk: The magnet isn't that big.

I'll get pics tomorrow.

Yea I got mine today too...we'll see.

I can't wait to hear and also see the differences.

:tt: :withstupid:

My ebay light changer came in the mail yesterday. The shiny coin is a quarter for size comparison.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v7...0/DCP_4081.jpg

The directions said to mount it as low as possible without surrounding it by steel ( DOH!! ) so I put it on the crossbrace for my center stand.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v7...0/DCP_4082.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v7...0/DCP_4083.jpg


Now that it's installed ( total time was under 5 minutes as a tie wrap holds it in place), I'll be willing to bet that the light in question will have cars there all week when I pull up. :lol:

I'll report back as soon as I find out if it works.

Jeff

Nice location for install.

Well,here's mine. Unfortunately,I installed it without taking step by step pics but here's what I have...oh and I would say that mine is smaller than his at 1"X3"X1/8" and it doesn't have any "case" of any kind. The black ridges on the unit are "flux ridges" that isolate the magnet from metal when you mount it to a open frame bike like 73's. I mounted mine inside my fairing with the magnet side down using 3m double sided tape. The adhesive that came with the unit didn't work btw. I originally mounted it with the fins down in line with where the adhesive was and it didn't work. I've removed it and flipped it so the flat side is down and I'll let you know after I get a chance to test it better.

To be honest,and I'm sorry GasMan but I've gotten much stronger magnets from old car speakers. Granted a speaker magnet weighs a lot more...

I know for a fact that a magnet will trigger a loop. I've used them to test loops in the past for my job but I get dubious when a company claims a magnet roughly the size of a stick of gum can trigger a loop. We'll see..

The pics are of the package it came in,some poor pics of the unit,and an outside shot of where it is on my bike.

That looks like the backside of mine.

Also, I put this on my '93 Kawasaki ZR1100 as the '73 H1 is still in my basement :whistle:

Still waitin on results....

if I'm right... so is Tigger :lol:

:tt: :lol:

Well,I went out for a minute last night and tried it on a left turn light that normally won't change unless I put down my kickstand and sometimes move around and the trigger worked. I haven't tried it on the "impossible light" yet but I'll let everyone know. Like I said,I know a magnet will work,maybe just not such a small/weak one. If not,I have an old car speaker I was going to use for this anyway.

As expected, I was surrounded by cars this morning and this afternoon at the only traffic light that gives me problems.

Maybe wednesday as it's raining now and they're calling for rain tuesday.

Jeff

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v7...DCP_4081-1.jpg

It doesn't seem to work at the traffic light it was purchased for. I added two cow magnets to my center stand ( 1/2" diameter & 3" long ) and it still didn't make a difference.


I think it's more of the activation strip than the magnet unit itself. :idk:

Jeff

Sucks. http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m...s/pooppoke.gif

Yea mine isn't any better. I think it helps on the ones that would change if I put my kick stand down but it's completely ineffective on the ones that don't work with the stand.

Tigger, contact Don, I'm sure he would like to hear your feedback.

I'll get back to him.

I'm sorry (although not surprised) to hear about the bad luck with the signal trigggers, guys.

I know in Arizona (where I used to live) state law says that if a light doesn't change for you after a reasonable period of time you can treat it as a malfunctioning signal and run it when it is safe to do so. I've actually successfully used that defense in traffic court and at the roadside, but YMMV. ;)