HID Conversion

[mogu83]

I'm considering something like this. Anyone have some experience with converting to HID that they want to share. I was looking at this on e-bay:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/271129516171?ss ... 1438.l2649


Naturally opinions and hearsay is always interesting (sometimes humorous) but first hand knowledge is always preferred.

[omg1010]

Hi,

I have such a kit (not exactly the same but a similar) in my R1200S. I have converted only the low beam and not the high beam. Eversince I got excellent light day and night. Mounting was pretty easy and done in a matter of 15 minutes. HID compared to standard bulbs is a huuuuge difference and I can only recommend the same both for better visibility and to be seen much better ...

Brgds
Oliver

[BobbyLeBout]

I had a dealer install high and low beam. When switching between them it was hard to see the difference. I should have done low only.

[kirby]

*

[Coyote Crazy]

mogu83,

You can find many opinons here from those that have many more years experience than I that suggest you should not install an HID in the existing housing. I think many of them have valid points so my advise is to do a search and give what they say honest consideration.

That being said I have attempted 2 low beam conversions on my 2007 R1200R.

The first one was unsuccessful, primarily due to the fact the components were generic junk! The "H11" bulb had plastic locking tabs that did not quite fit the headlight and the back of the bulb did not have the 90° connector on the back like the OEM bulb. The plastic locking tabs broke the second time I tried to install the bulb and the back of the bulb wiring was squashed tight up against the back of the headlight housing. After numerous unsuccessful attempts to contact the seller I chucked the whole thing into the trash and wrote it off to experience.

The second attempt has been very successful. I purchased the "kit" from here http://www.carhidkits.com. You will need to email them for pricing on half a kit with the digital slim ballast because all the kits online have 2 bulbs and 2 ballasts (unless you are attempting to do both hi and low beam). I ordered the 6000K color bulb. What I received was a complete half kit with 1 wiring harness, 1 digital slim ballast and 1 H11 Philips bulb with stainless steel locking tabs and a 90° connector on the back. At first you will think it is impossible to get all that wiring and ballast into the rear portion of the headlight housing. It took me several attempts but I was eventually successful. It is a tight fit, otherwise you will need to drill about a 1" hole in the back of the headlight housing and find a location to mount the balast outside the housing and run the wiring back into the housing through an included rubber grommet (I cut the grommet off since I fit everything inside the housing and did not need it, if you are attempting to convert both hi and low beam you will need to drill the holes and mount the ballasts outside the housing and use the rubber grommets).

I have had no CANBUS issues or "flickering" issues what so ever. What this bulb does not have is the black coating on the tip of the bulb that the OEM bulb has so you want to be very carful as to how you aim the headlight. After several thousand miles, many of which were after sun down, and some 400 to 500 mile days it has been trouble free for over two years now. I have been riding solo and with groups in various positions, and poled my fellow riders and there were no complaints when I was behind them about "blinding" light and to date no oncoming traffic has "flashed" me. The biggest change I noticed was the enhanced brightness of reflective materials, the 6000K wavelength reflects much more light back from reflective signs and highway reflectors. I also believe that I can see better and farther down the road at night but YMMV.

[deilenberger]

What this bulb does not have is the black coating on the tip of the bulb that the OEM bulb has so you want to be very carful as to how you aim the headlight.

This would be my biggest concern with this sort of conversion. The anti-glare coating a standard bulb has is there to block the direct view of the filament from oncoming traffic. Without it - oncoming traffic is likely to be both blinded and distracted (drawn toward actually) by the very intense light in the discharge gap of the HID bulb. You'll note on any simple reflective headlight housing designed for use with an HID bulb there is a shield in front of the HID bulb specifically for this reason.

IMHO - good quality auxiliary lighting (Hella FF50's are my favorite) are more usable and useful. They can be aimed to fill in the dark areas.

FWIW - even with factory HID's on two of my cars - at times I find the "enhanced" reflectivity from road signs a hazard.. they can be so bright as to cause the iris of your eye to close down and the retina changes from night vision to day vision, reducing the sensitivity of your eye - meaning other things aren't seen so well. It also takes some number of seconds for the iris to open again and full dark-adapted night vision to work. As you get older all these changes take longer to happen (and Harry is at least my age..)

YMMV..

[omg1010]

Don,

I don't agree to all the points. First of all it is important to make the right choice. There are 50 Watt and 35 watt kits and there are different light colors. I would recommend choosing a 35 Watt kit and a bulb with no more than 6000k. This is what I have and it is not brutal light and blinding traffic surrounding me.

I have had such kit in my old R1100R (H4) for many years and have the same in my 12S since 5 months. It works just great without the negatives outlined ... I can only recommend this.

Brgds
Oliver

[mogu83]

Right now I'm leaning toward a 35w 6000K in the high beam position.

I'm running an Osram long life H11 in the low beam / a pair of Piaa 35W fog lights with the lens mounted on a 45 deg angle up and away from the bike and a pair of Cree led lights (6000K) low on the crash bars. The Osrams give me a little more light and an acceptable service life (I hate changing lamps on the road), the Piaas light up the sides of the road when I ride through the wooded areas at night and the Cree lights mounted low and apart hopefully will make me easier to see in the daytime.

I did have a Hella 550 7" 3 degree beam light on the left crash bar but I think it was giving me an air flow problem across the left cylinder. The big Hella worked great at night on a long straight road when you think you see something out beyond your lights. That 3 degree beam reached out a long way and I miss it, and that's the function I expect the HID lamp to fill.

Seeing that the low beam stays on when the high beam is turned (R1200R) on I don't foresee any problem waiting the one second or so for the HID lamp to fire up on the high beam.

I've been riding for a couple of years so I have a pretty solid idea of what I need in lighting for the riding I do. However the HID lights are a new technology for me.

Thanks for the info. One more thing - how hot does the ballast get and is mounting it inside the headlight shell safe.

[omg1010]

You seem to be a light freak ... So many different lights on your bike sounds like an overkill. I have nothing but the HID low beam and I tell ya its bright. Bright enough for me. Maybe not bright enough for some aussie outback riders who want to avoid contact with the kangaroos ...

Brgds
Oliver

[mogu83]

Not so much a light freak more of a realist.
I know that riding a motorcycle the odds of staying up on two wheels are not in my favor, as the normal position of a vehicle with two wheels in line is laying on its side.. I put on a decent amount of miles a year and like to tweak the odds in my favor. My lighting is set up for specific purposes.
The LL Osram low beam doesn't give as much light as some of the higher power bulbs but has a longer service life.

The Piaa lights light up the woods,corn fields, etc on the side of the road at night and give a heads up to the critters waiting to cross in front of me. Unlike Europe the roads over here are often shared with large animals, deer,moose,cows and lately an occasional bear come to mind, that's in the East, as you head West the amount of potential targets becomes more diverse.

The Cree LED driving lights are supposed to make me more obvious to my fellow road users that are drinking coffee,using the cell phone,texting messages and basically driving along with their head up their ass.

The big Hella (the light I'm trying to replace) came into play while traveling across the great bread basket of our Country. Last summer I was traveling to the left coast in the middle of a heat wave. I elected to cross the top of Oklahoma at night, 450+ miles of flat straight road (Rt412 for you locals). That's like riding from the Czech border across Germany to Paris and I still had another almost 200 to get to SantaFe. I was traveling at close to triple digits and had the road to myself. I thought I could see stuff moving just past my high beam but couldn't be sure. The Hella threw a beam way down the road and I was amazed at the number of coyote that were being spooked up about a half mile ahead as I was coming down the road. I guess they were hunting small critters that live by the side of the road.

So nothing is a farkle they all have a specific purpose. If you ride a lot over here you ride thru just about every kind of topography you can imagine and encounter unbelievablely diverse road hazards. I did see a kangaroo running loose in West Virginia once, almost hit a Buffalo wandering a back road in New York state and was almost buried by a trunk load of soybeans in South Dakota. Over here riding across a time zone in a day is no big deal. I have other prettier bikes for going to cruze nights and hanging at the local pub, but the Beemer is for traveling.
Mt Evans 14,200+ feet ____________________Pretty Bike

long answer ---- nothing to do waiting to go vist family

[omg1010]

All well noted and fully understood. However I suggest you go for an HID conversion. That will give you more than enough light ... And by the way in our countryside we also have larger objects trying cross the roads (like wild boar, deer and others) which may also lead to harmful contact. Thats why I pretty much avoid riding at night or when it gets dark.

Brgds
Oliver

[Coyote Crazy]

One more thing - how hot does the ballast get and is mounting it inside the headlight shell safe.

Harry,
I don't have a good answer for that. The sales person I spoke to on the phone when I purchased the kit did not seem to think it would be a problem with the digital slim ballast. He may of just wanted to make the sale? I had/have the same concern. I have a spare headlight housing and carry the original OEM bulb with me when traveling far from home or know that I will be riding in night hours a significant distance from home. I can share with you that I completed an Iron Butt ride last summer of 1,639 miles in 36 hours, passing through desert areas with temperatures in excess of 110 degrees and to date I have not experienced any over heating issues with the ballast inside the housing. At this point I have decided to continue to run it until it fails and deal with the consequences then.

[Lost Rider]

While I don't have this on my R per se, I figured I'd share it here anyway.... when the budget allows I will be upgrading my R with this exact setup.
HID is great, much brighter than stock lamps, but no comparison to modern LED lights watt for watt IMO.

I have a 55w aftermarket HID kit similar to the ones listed in here on my Husaberg FE570, it's bright, huge improvement over stock, but it was proven to not be enough while I was riding/pre-running the Baja 1000 course solo at night.
After that experience I knew I needed to upgrade, both for actual night time driving and for better attention grabbing properties on pavement. Riding at night in the winter time is a given, I can't sit around a campsite doing nothing at 5pm when there's riding to be had, so lighting very well can be a matter of life or death for me.

After much research I decided on the Baja Designs SII LED Combo Lights. Super bright, super small, and race proven.
The very small size of these lights should make it easy to mount them on the 12R in a position that tickles your fancy and there's different lenses to fill your needs. Mine are Combo reflectors. When it comes time to upgrade the R's lighting, I won't bother with HID lamps that the OEM reflectors weren't designed to utilize in the first place and go right to the big (little) guns. The lumens output, fixture size, beam spread and efficiency of these lights are far superior to any LED's or even conventional lights I could find out there and why I invested in them. Highly recommended.

http://www.bajadesigns.com/ProductDetai ... ber=660201

Here's a few comparison photos shot on full manual with my camera to control the exposure, what you see is what it is.









This is a stock headlight on our CRF250L which is comparable to a R1200R stock headlight, low beam.





CFR250L high beam










Husaberg HID headlight only.











Two Baja Designs SII LED Combo Lights only







HID and Baja Design lights






HID only in Baja

[omg1010]

Nice post and I think we can all agree that LEDs also make good light. But the LEDs you have mounted are not roadworthy as they will blind all traffic coming towards you. Secondly if you put 4 HID lights these would produce an even or superior amount of light in comparison to the 4 LEDs.

On my roadbike (R1200S) I prefer to have one good HID light (which is illegal on motorbikes in our part of the world) and not too mount extensive aux lights.

Brgds
Oliver

[Dr. Strangelove]

pretty shot.
to get the stars exposed and not blow out the highlights from your lighting...combined exposure?

And that is a nice lighting setup. One of the advantages of being older (!!!) is that at 5pm in the winter when on the road I hope I am in a warm motel with a nice single malt.

John

[Lost Rider]

Nice post and I think we can all agree that LEDs also make good light. But the LEDs you have mounted are not roadworthy as they will blind all traffic coming towards you. Secondly if you put 4 HID lights these would produce an even or superior amount of light in comparison to the 4 LEDs.

On my roadbike (R1200S) I prefer to have one good HID light (which is illegal on motorbikes in our part of the world) and not too mount extensive aux lights.

Brgds
Oliver

Thanks Oliver!
Luckily for me, roadworthy is a subjective term and for the most part I stay away from riding at night where there's much traffic. My LED's are my high beam, easily switched on or off with my thumb while riding for upcoming traffic at night, during the day I'm not concerned about blinding cagers, quite the opposite really, blast them is my goal and I can see them working well as cars get out of my way while splitting lanes in heavy traffic.

HID's are good like I said, but when retrofitting them into housings not designed for them a bike doesn't get the same beam spread you do with stock lamps and they can also blind traffic at night. That's why they are illegal in your part of the world, but debating legality is too subjective to matter really, we're all adults here and make our own decisions... I could care less about any laws pertaining to how I decide to use my bike.
I just posted this up here to give a real world example of brightness levels comparing incandescent to HID to LED, and at least on the bikes that I have it's obvious which one gets the most lumens down range, and in the end I thought that's what Harry's looking for.
For his purposes of replacing his 7" 3º Hella and getting more light far away I would recommend the Baja Designs SII LED's with the Spot lenses. Mine are combos, meaning there's 1 spot and one flood LED in each fixture. Or go with a couple of Baja Design Squadrons, doubling the output from what I have.
The other thing to consider is it's known that HID lamps or ballasts can fail, especially when you're talking about cheap chinese ebay specials, I can't comment on which brands over another, but have read plenty of posts on ADV with failed HID's. Having all your lighting dependent on one single light that might fail isn't wise for riders like me who find themselves alone and far from home at night, would be a catastrophe really, and something that I've thought about when I was just depending on my single HID light with no redundancy and lead me to upgrading my setup on the Husa.
Of course the R has two lamps, but even just losing your high beam would suck when traveling, especially if you can't get replacement parts for the ebay HID setup anywhere but on ebay.

We all have different needs with much different applications for lighting, or just about anything MC related.






Thanks John!

It was a single 30 second exposure, I just flashed my LED's very quickly to get this shot in Death Valley a few weeks back while taking a quick break.


mmmm, a single malt sounds good at the end of the day. I just have too much energy to sit still that early, might as well use it while I still can!

[Karamazov]

Purchasing quality products today has become a very difficult chore. It is because of the large number of vendors boasting of their products.On the other hand, the customers have become very smart and proactive.if you are on the lookout for a quality HID kit, it is best to buy it from http://www.hidnation.com.

Find somewhere else to make your sales pitch HidNation.

[mogu83]

Find somewhere else to make your sales pitch HidNation.

+1 Was $199 now $34 Click on SPECS and get nothing

[zei220]

For owners in the uk, i recommend www.hid50.com , I have the 35watt unit, and it turns night into day.

[mogu83]

UPdate ---
I did the HID conversion. Couldn't use the 35 watt kit because the CAN-bus didn't like it. It was looking for a 55 watt draw when it checked the lights. I went for the 55 watt kit. OMG the light standing in front of the bike was like looking into the sun. I was happy happy, but the light still had to pass 'the test'. It came this weekend on the back roads of North Carolina and the HID failed miserably. While it threw a lot of light, the light was totally unfocused and I actually think my real world visability was worse when I put the Hi-Beam headlight on. So out comes the HID kit and back in goes the Osram Night Breaker.

Naturally YMMV