HID Upgrade

[DGXSER]

Having done some night riding of late, and having a stock reg/ rect and a stock headlight. I determined I was long overdue for an upgrade. Having tried the typical H4 Bi-Xenon light and been very impressed with the light output but not the dazzling or blinding effect on on-coming traffic, I followed TCs thread on the HID project closely. So MAD PROPS to the true doctor, TC who came up with this assembly.

So here is my coverage of the implementation of that upgrade. Many thanks to TC for doing all the leg work to determine the products and how to implement them. I am simply trying to provide a little more detail into how I got the project completed.

Step one, get the 7” Round projector housing. It is listed on ebay as “H6024 7" ROUND DIAMOND CUT PROJECTOR HEADLIGHTS W/H4 HEAD LIGHTS LAMP PAIR SET” Sellers name is X3RACING. You will only use the housing of this, not the bulb or the internal lens.



The above assembly is after removing the bulb that comes with the assembly. Now you want to remove the glass lens from the housing. Now, I tried this by prying on the thinner lip that is exposed, and my first lens cracked all over the place. So, I took a hacksaw and cut a notch out of the outer lip in the grey plastic to let me get under the thicker lip of the glass lens.





As you can see, this allowed me to put the needed pressure on the glass to pry it out without damaging it.



So now you can turn the assembly over and remove all the attachments, the internal optic lens held in place with two screws, and the hardware to secure the bulb. Total of four small screws.



After removing the hardware, you now have an empty shell of a projector lens and a glass lens cover. I left in the “angel eye” just in case I decide to try it.



So now you’re ready for the mini projector HID kit. This is sold by MTFANSCLUB and listed as “2.5" MOTORCYCLE BI-XENON HID KIT Angel Eye Devil Eye Projector Lens Ballast”. Make sure you get the kit with the ballast! It is sold with and without the ballast.



Here is the contents.



The HID projector is pre-assembled as shown. You will need to disassemble this, start by removing the small screw and clip (green arrow) on the back that holds the bulb in. Then unscrew the black retaining nut (red arrow) and the rest of the components can be removed. Note, if you do not remove the clip that retains the bulb, the black retaining nut can not come off.



Dis-assembled.



So now you have the washers shown above. The white silicone washer on the left is thick and it goes on the projector bulb housing inside the 7” Round housing. At stock thickness, the glass lens will not fit over the 2.5” HID assembly. You will need to cut the silicone washer down, roughly in half. I used my handy dandy pocket knife to cut it.



Below you see the two pieces after cutting.



Now you put the thinner silicone washer, with the smaller opening, back onto the HID assembly, larger opening side against the housing as before. Then slide the tail shaft through the 7” housing. Now put the remaining washers back on. You will note that the larger metal washers have tabs that position them in slots in the tail shaft. The largest also has the three tabs that will fit only one way into the 7” housing.



For those of you who are keeping the angel / devil eye wiring in place, you will notice that there is a small notch in the bottom of the 7” housing to allow the wires to pass, but the silicone and metal washers cover that opening. I took my handy dandy pocket knife and cut a slot in the silicone washer for the wires to slip through.



I then cut a notch out of the large metal washer with a dremel cutoff wheel to make room for the wires. Sorry the pic is a little blury.



Now you’re ready for final assembly . Notice that there is a slot in the bottom of the tail shaft where the low/hi beam part of the HID bulb goes. This MUST face down for proper low and hi beam operation. You will note it needed adjustment in the picture above. Below you see the full assembly beside a stock headlight for comparison on depth/height. All that is left is to permanently re-attach the glass lens to the 7” housing.



I took some 3M body moulding double sided outdoor tape and cut it into thin strips to reattach the lens. I laid the thin strips into the lip inside the housing and then pushed the lens into the tape.



Below you see the new HID assembly installed in the headlight trim brackets, ready to be installed in the headlight bucket. It is pretty simple to disassemble and reassemble. There are two bolts, one on top and one on bottom that hold the internal shell in the larger trim ring. Then three screws attach the inner shell around the actual light.



TO BE CONTINUED.......

[DGXSER]

Part two, getting all the stuff and wires on the bike.....

I forgot to mention in part one, when you install the assembly into the stock trim rings and such, make sure you keep the orientation of the assembly correct.

So, now is where the REAL fun begins. Getting all the wiring and components on the bike and ticked away in a nice safe place. Good news is, all of the components in this kit are waterproof and able to be mounted exposed. However, I still am not a fan of them being overly exposed to view.
I started by mounting the relay beside the ignition coils under the gas tank cover. This lets the power wire reach the battery, and all headlight connector wires into the headlight bucket. I added a wire tie to clamp it to the frame after the picture was taken.



I routed the positive power wire following the factory harness back to the battery. You will also need to remove the Reserve Lighting Unit. I considered this part expendable and have no plans of re-installing it. So I cut the wires to use the factory harness connector. On the RLU side of the connector, I removed all the wires except the Blue/Black and Blue/Yellow wires. Those two I stripped the ends of, inserted a piece of shrink wrap over one wire, twisted them together, soldered them, then put the shrink wrap over them. I then reinstalled the connector. Put dielectric grease over the empty sockets and the backs of the wires ones, and wrapped electrical tape over the empties for good measure. Sorry, I did not get a good picture of it. I did it a long time ago when I first tried the other style HID. But you can see in the picture where the RLU used to be in front of the Reg/Rect.



I found I had to go under the frame by the airbox so the wire was long enough to reach the battery. The in line fuse is under the harness near the airbox snorkel.



Ok, so here is where I got a little more creative, and voided any warranty. I figured it came on a slow boat from China, no real warranty anyway. It comes with this connector for the headlight connector that was attached to your stock bulb to plug into.



I figured that the headlight bucket is packed full enough without another connector, and the stock harness has a connector. There is a short pigtail basically to convert the harness connector to a headlight bulb connector. So I decided to eliminate one connector. Now you do need to pay attention to the wires here so you get the proper hi and low beam operation. Here is the “pigtail” I mentioned. Yes, I have tried a few other headlight alterations, so my “pigtail” has been modified before.



What I did was to remove the wires, connectors and all, from the white harness connector. I then got the same size and type crimp on connectors. Pulled the connectors out of the HID kit connector, cut off the wire ends and put the crimp on ends in place to match the factory wire harness, and put the HID wires in the factory plastic connector in the correct order.



So now that is ready to connect. Here is the bucket with the connector assembled. Now, to deal with the rest of the wiring, I removed the turn signals so I could pull back the headlight mounting ears for access. This area is where TC suggested mounting the ballast and the transformer.



On to the ballast, and the transformer and all of its wiring. The kit wiring connectors make it pretty easy to put the wiring together. They only fit with the right wires and one way only. If you find you are having to force something, stop, look again, it all goes together easy. There is a ground wire, I added it to my turn signal wire ground.



I chose to follow the guidance from TC and mount the ballast to the headlight bracket. It comes with a factory bracket for mounting. The hole is not quite big enough for the bolt of the headlight to go through, so I enlarged it.



Below you see the ballast in place with the turn signal installed.



Next I needed to mount the transformer, I found it would fit under the ignition switch and mounted it with more of my double sided tape. I found it needs to mount as far back toward the frame as possible so the headlight bucket has clearance.



After that, you can remount the other turn signal.



You can see in the picture above in the lower left side of the headlight bucket the three wires for the HID light. Plug those in and then install the light.



Now you are ready to aim your light and go for a brightly lit night time ride!!! If you find your hi and low beams appear to be switched, or if you have trouble getting the light to work, you will want to make sure you got those three headlight wires in the right spots.

I did not install the Angel Eye lighting. If you wanted to, it has a positive and ground wire to feed it, you could use the spare positive wire in the headlight bucket to feed it, and add the ground to the others at the turn signal ground. There should be plenty of room inside the bucket for it to stay in there. Again, the connectors are pretty simple, hard to get wrong.

Hope this helps anyone looking to upgrade their headlight to HID. TC posted the results and I have to say I was even more impressed in person. As you can see it was dark when I finished up, so I took it out for a ride. Knowing I have the proper cutoff, I will never go back!!!

[conquest87tsi]

I just ordered my HID kit. I tryed the headlight a few months ago with bad results. I am planning to upgrade my fuse block(x4 fuses) with a six fuse and run this into it.

What gauge is the red power wire? Want to have everything ready for when it comes.

Awesome right up by the way, gave me the motivation to finish my lighting project.

[DGXSER]

Glad you found the write up helpful!

The power wire comes with a 10 amp fuse built into it. If you use wire rated for 10 amps, you would be fine. I did not look to see the actual size of the wire, it is roughly the same size as most the other harness wires, 16-18 ga.

The HID kit wire also has the connector to fit on the screw at the battery. So you would not have to do any work or modifications to put it directly to the battery. If you leave your headlight relay in place as I did, the headlight still does not come on until the bike is running just like stock, so there is no power draw on the battery when the bike is not running.

The relay location I chose was based upon wire lengths. The power wire comes form that relay, and so does the wirign to connect to the factory headlight connector. So it can not move further back on the bike and still have those wires long enough for the front end to turn all the way. If you cut the HID kit wire at the fuse which is at the airbox, I am nto sure it would reach to the fuse panel.

Just giving you some things to think about. Obviously it can be done.

[TopCatGr58]

Hey Don,

Great writeup. I'm glad you were impressed with the amount of light it throws out on the road as well as providing the low beam cutoff for oncoming traffic! I'll have to go back and remount my ballast since I just zip tied it to the ear! I was lazy and didn't want to bother taking the ear and turn signal off to use the actual bracket!

T.C.

[natemoen]

Would it work to mount the ballast where the RLU goes? Looks small enough.

[DGXSER]

Nate, the wires that run from the ballast to the transformer are not long enough to separate them much more than 6-8". And the wires from the transformer go to the HID light, and again are not very long. So both components need to be right up there around the headlight.

For those with fairings, it should be pretty easy to get them mounted. For us naked riders it was a little challenging to fit it all in. Which is why I wanted to document the locations that worked for me.

[IanDMacDonald]

I did this on my 750E last year, and I test-fitted it using an HID kit from HID Country. Obviously everything was too short, so I broke out my soldering iron and heat shrink tubing and some 16 ga. wire and lengthened everything by about 18". It allowed me to put whatever I wanted wherever without limitations of where things had to go due to wire length. The kit was pretty damm cheap. I remember buying the H4 round headlight from some seller, forget which. Pretty cheap setup. I was satisfied. The 750E had an on/off headlight switch. They stopped after whatever year. Not sure if the 11E had the on/off switch. I can tell you this: the ballast will burn out if the bike starts with the light on. It draws a tremendous amount of voltage at start-up. If you install an HID kit on a bike with an on/off switch, make sure your headlight is always off when starting. Also, some cheap HID kits make a high-pitch noise when switch from low beam to high beam. Also, do not touch the bulb with your bare hands. Any amount of oil from your skin getting on that bulb will blow it as soon as it gets hot.

[ExcessiveBiker]

Projector Assy.

[QUOTE=DGXSER;393601]Glad you found the write up helpful!


DGXSER,

How much did you pay for your projector lens assy? The current price is $65. Also, where can I get a square lens for the standard?

thanks,
ExcessiveBiker

[crazy steve]

...where can I get a square lens for the standard?

First, you'll have to do this mod: http://www.xs11.com/forum/showthread.php?t=33251

You can then find aftermarket lens assemblies that will now fit.

[ExcessiveBiker]

square lens

First, you'll have to do this mod: http://www.xs11.com/forum/showthread.php?t=33251

You can then find aftermarket lens assemblies that will now fit.

Steve,
I did not put all the words into my post sentence. Please amend to say diamond cut HID I can put a projector into.

ExcessiveBiker

[Yard Dogg]

Nice Mod. It looks like you ran a separate power wire for the headlight, that helps a lot. But then I noticed in your pics that you were still rocking the old main fuse with the white clip connectors, that could have been much of your lighting problem. It makes something around 8 splices before reaching your ignition. Here's what I did. A nice fat power wire with a soldered copper connector to the starter relay, then a soldered inline 30 amp chip fuse. This will provide much better power to everything.

[DGXSER]

Due to the way this bike came to me, with no fuses in it what so ever, I put all of the fuses in the new fuse box. The wiring for the main fuse you see is all new installed by me.

As for the headlight performance, I know for certain I had good voltage at the bulb. I tested it more than a few times. My flashers all flash at idle, and my headlight did not noticably dim at idle. You just can not get the kind of light out of the stock bulb that you get from this HID setup.

[IanDMacDonald]

To be honest, I'm kind of surprised there are a lot of veterans on here swearing by the HID setups. It's the complete opposite on the Triples and GS forum. They swear by the halogen lights due to some of the articles that danielsternlighting.com has. Difference of oppinion, no big deal. I loved my HID setup on my Triple. Plus, it make me more confident that I would be seen. I even used my lights in the daytime ('78 has on/off switch).

[natemoen]

I even used my lights in the daytime ('78 has on/off switch).

I take it by that statement you have never tried that on/off switch....

It only controls the light before the engine starts, once the engine starts and the headlight relay latches you cannot turn the headlight off with that switch.