Headlight died...weeeeeeeee

[TopCatGr58]

Hey Cajun,

The reason why Tat posted about both of those items was for the PROJECTOR and it's ability to FIT INSIDE The cheap headlight reflector which is used to hold the projector inside the OEM headlight housing. You remove the metal central reflector from the housing/reflector, you take off the front glass lens, mount the projector inside, and then seal up the reflector with the glass lens back onto it, so it can be held by the OEM bucket, and you have an actual HID PROJECTOR which properly shines the light pattern down the road, and NOT just scattered all over the reflector and into oncoming traffic. I posted a mega-thread on performing the HID conversion process, a search should reveal it, I don't have the link handy.

I would like to add that the 55 W HID unit will provide more light, but it will burn out the bulb faster than the 35 W version. YMMV.

T.C.

[cajun31]

Thanks tc

Thanks for the clarification. I have been doing a lot of research on these. I want to be able to see the road. As I get older more light is a good thing. I don't want to blind anyone either.

[Tat2demon]

If you havent seen it yet, heres the thread I used to do my HID. Great walkthrough. Actually, that should be put in the modifications section.

http://www.xs11.com/forum/showthread...&highlight=hid

[MindWebs]

hmm, if my HID headlight was thought to be too bright..

Wouldn't someone have flashed they're highbeams at me?????????????

i have the HID on my ninja, and seca, have yet to be flashed by oncoming cars
because they think i'm running highbeams at them.

the ninja got the upgrade 8 years ago, the seca 3 years ago.

there are 2 kinds of HID available

1 Bad kind uses HID high beam and regular low beam (what's the point?)

the good kind is a single HID bulb for high and low beam with a solinoid to
pull the bulb inside the caseing to cut the light output to half for low beam.

[crazy steve]

there are 2 kinds of HID available

1 Bad kind uses HID high beam and regular low beam (what's the point?)

the good kind is a single HID bulb for high and low beam with a solinoid to
pull the bulb inside the caseing to cut the light output to half for low beam.

Actually, both of those are probably the 'bad' kind...

A real, legal HID uses a HID-specific lens/reflector (NOT a H4 type), and low beam is created by dropping a 'shutter' down to create the low-beam cut-off or moving the lamp behind a shutter.

Whether or not you get 'blinked' is no test. I know when I'm confronted by blinding lights, I'm concentrating on staying on the road and may not have time or remember to flash them. You really need to check your aim to know. To check the aim, set the bike 25' from a wall. Put a horizontal line off the ground at the same distance as to the center of the headlight from the ground, then put another line below it. If your light is no more than 34.5" above the ground, this line should be 3" lower. 35" to 39", 4" lower. Now turn on the light, you should see a sharp cut-off on low beam. Depending on whether you have a 'car' or 'motorcycle' lamp, the 'bias' will be left side level with the lower line, right side running up for a car lamp. For a bike, the 'V' will be level but neither side should be above the upper line; the bottom of the 'V' should be a bit below the lower line. If you don't have a sharp cutoff and/or there's any light above the top line, you're putting glare into the oncoming drivers. There is no adjustment for the high beam, you only adjust the low. If the high beam is too low, that's an issue with the lens/reflector design.

[MindWebs]

that is a very good test, very technical and highly accurate.

now, i may be out side those realms.

i leave for work at 5 am

i ussually meet 8-10 cars on my 30min drive

i ussually see between 2-6 deer each trip, some i have to brake checks for, others are a 1/2-3/4 mile away.

i choose life and any extra light i can throw down the road. including the aux. light (seca) being turned into a spot/driving light(originally fog light) also not legal(i'm guessing)

i may be short on legality but my brake checks help me to sleep at night without a guilty conscience and without having sleeping in a hospital bed.

in wisconsin we have lots of deer, and they seem to want to kill bikers.
if i could mount guns on my bike i would.

now....

Sorry for the rant.

i have had many deer less then 5 feet off my front tire, it tends to "ruffle my feathers" and with the trees/forrests 10-15ft off to the sides of the road, any extra warning is a good thing.

you are correct that if a person can afford the components to correctly set up
they're bikes for HID, then by all means they should.

they will also be much happier with the correctly focused light that it would provide. and it will provide several benifits to them

better light output
lower power consumtion
more reliable light source, (no filliment to burn out)
more vibration resistant parts
better sealed electrical connections (new style weather-pack connecters)

the power saved can be put to other uses and is quite handy..

again sorry for the rant,
but i'm operating on a very tight budget. i am not trying to irritate cages but i need to find a balence between my safety and they're comfort.

Happy riding everyone!!

[kflyboy]

http://www.ebay.com/itm/301123549721...%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

Bought that kit a couple of weeks ago. It is plug and play. When the weather warms up a bit, I will install it. Let you know how it works. My son put one in his 600 GSXR-said it lights up every thing. DO NOT TOUCH THE BULB WITH YOUR FINGERS-LIGHT BLOWS OUT WHEN YOU TURN IT ON!!!

[crazy steve]

i am not trying to irritate cages but i need to find a balence between my safety and they're comfort...

But it's not a 'comfort' issue for them; it's safety, same as you.

This is something I feel strongly about. I also live in a rural area with occasional critters on the road and basically zero streetlights, so good lighting when it's dark out is extremely important. But when an oncoming vehicle blinds me and I can't see the road well, I'm not only in danger but I'm a danger to the oncoming vehicle too. If I hit something I can't see, that object or my vehicle could end up in the other lane.

A bit over a year ago I bought a new car, a '13 Mustang. It came with factory HID headlights, and they're pretty good lights. Now, I get flashed once in a while, but the lights are adjusted correctly. So I started paying attention to what flashed me, and it's cars. Trucks/SUVs have never flashed me. The difference is the drivers eye height; only the car drivers were low enough to get any glare (generally when I was on roads that were a bit hilly). If you're only/mostly meeting trucks/SUVs in your drive, they may be high enough not to see any glare, but that doesn't mean it's not there.

As to how much 'better' HIDs are, a lot of that is advertising hype. Automotive lighting has changed over the years, not always for the better. When the designers switched to 'aero' headlights with plastic lenses, that's when H4 lamps came in and it was primarily to make up the light losses caused by the switch from glass to plastic. Plastic compared to the same 'grade' glass transmits up to 15% less light, with 10% being typical.

The best vehicle lighting I've ever had was a '70 Mercury with four 5.75" lights and fitted with a full set of Cibie E-code halogens. Not legal at the time (only sealed beams were legal then), those lights with their top-quality reflectors and optical-grade glass lenses would put the HIDs in my Mustang to shame with 'mild' 55W low and 60W high beams. I rarely got flashed with those either after careful aiming. While a brighter lamp can improve lighting, if you don't put the light where it's supposed to be, you can be creating more problems than you solve...

[clcorbin]

Well, I tried to solder it with a co workers soldergun...

It wouldnt stick.

Gonna use mine when I get home. Till then, its bypassed ( like everything else on this bike )

Don't waste your time on a solder gun. The tip doesn't have enough thermal mass. Get a good (or heck, even cheap Radio Shack) iron and be done with it. That wire is pretty big and there is a decent amount of copper it is attached to, so I would recommend a 3/16" or 1/4" wide chisel tip iron. Those tips hold enough heat that the joint doesn't cool the iron down so much it can't melt the solder.

Also, get some flux and new solder while you are there. Brush the flux on the joint and the wire. Let the iron get HOT (not just warm) and tin and clean the tip (those copper cleaning pads work GREAT). Then put a little bit of fresh solder on the tip and press it against the copper tab and clean off the old solder. Do the same (what little you can) with the wire end, then solder them back together with new solder.

Clean the flux off with alcohol and a toothbrush (don't use your wife's....) and you will be good to go for a LONG time. Given that this joint failed, you might want to go ahead and redo the other joints while you have it on the bench.