[soulpatch]

They can be directed. I do not have a projector housing in my headlight casing. They are fine though. I have traveled behind my fiance as well as had her oncoming when I was in the other lane. She said they were fine.

Regardless the safety increase for me is worth it.

[nd22121]

yeah goodpoint. and when you say directed you talking about the little white knobs that aim the actual lights, correct?

[soulpatch]

yeah. You can shift the lights up dowm let right or whatever you need. Yellow had to move his some when he installed them. I was pretty good on mine luckily.....

[Absolutnati]

deleted

[nd22121]

so i am looking at the different temps, and i have 8000K on my car. is that too blue for a bike? what do other people have and suggestions?

[The CyberPoet]

5500 is the optimal light for the road (most white light actually hitting the road surface; mimics daylight the best, which is what our eyes are genetically programmed to best utilize); as the numbers significantly increase above that, more of the bulb's output tends to actually scatter into the humidity & particles in the air (short wavelengths) which is good for being visible to others, but bad for lighting up the road-surface at a distance.

Since lower temps also tend to equal longer bulb life, shooting for something around 5500 degrees Kelvin makes sense, instead of shooting into the higher ranges

Cheers,
=-= The CyberPoet

[Absolutnati]

5500 is the optimal light for the road (most white light actually hitting the road surface; mimics daylight the best, which is what our eyes are genetically programmed to best utilize); as the numbers significantly increase above that, more of the bulb's output tends to actually scatter into the humidity & particles in the air (short wavelengths) which is good for being visible to others, but bad for lighting up the road-surface at a distance.

Since lower temps also tend to equal longer bulb life, shooting for something around 5500 degrees Kelvin makes sense, instead of shooting into the higher ranges

Cheers,
=-= The CyberPoet

I thought it was 4350K.

[yellow_kitty_kat]

I have 5000K bulbs in mine.

[The CyberPoet]

I thought it was 4350K.

That's about the best you can hope for out of an incandenscent light of any sort, like a halogen-xenon H4 filament bulb (think Sylvania Silverstars) -- filament bulbs in an H4 format simply are not going to make it to 5250 to 5500 degrees Kelvin (bright daylight) range. HIDs can outpace that and go way past it into glaringly white and then up into the blue-casts. The problem is that our night vision uses reds (think peripheral vision in the unlit areas); using blues decreases the white balance and screws with our ability to see those reds outside the lit areas.

This picture illustrates it fairly well as a concept:


Cheers,
=-= The CyberPoet

[The CyberPoet]

yellow_kitty_kat, where did you stick the ballasts?
I'm doing the 55 watt bixenon upgrade install this morning and am scratching my head about the ballast location... Might have to fab up custom brackets to hold it over the headlights.

EDIT: Saw it towards the end of the vid.

Cheers,
=-= The CyberPoet

[soulpatch]

I put mine under the dash as well. Though I can see some wires if I look down at the right angle.....

And the other ballast I actually slid in behind the center light.....

[The CyberPoet]

OK, so I decided I didn't like yellow's solution and came up with a new one for mounting my ballasts -- directly over the headlights. Note that if you're considering this upgrade, your ballasts may be a different size and this mod might not work. In my case, they are now held top-to-bottom by a combination of the headlight bracket at the bottom and the windsheild screen tab's underside on the top, plus left-to-right [and minorly top-to-bottom] by a bracket screwed with a self-tapping screw into the plastic surround**.
NOTE **: If you use a bracket like I did, make sure the screw on the far side (i.e. the side not shown below, right side of the bike) is positioned so that it's tip can not go into the wires coming up from the wiring loom to the instruments -- just move over another mm, so it exits on the other side of the rib on the plastic surround.




My next step is to consider whether to redo the loom that came with these HIDs (not long enough battery leads), or to use the SUV-Headlights one I bought. I kind of prefer the loom that came with the HIDs, as it only taps one headlight plug to get it's hi/low sense (meaning I can use the other one in the future for a sense to activate/disactivate secondary driving lights in conjunction with hi beam).

Cheers,
=-= The CyberPoet

[BarMatt80]

very nice setup cyber! question worry about heat? either from the lights or from the ballast?

[The CyberPoet]

I'm worried about the ballasts -- both heat and voltage, not so much about the bulbs themselves (HIDs run hot, but they also are more efficient in terms of light produced vs. heat produced, so hopefully at 1" from the bulb, it'll balance out).

The ballasts are designed to auto-shut down (protective feature) at 110 degrees C or if the supply-voltage drops under 13.2 volts (voltage shouldn't be an issue, but i have seen it drop to right around 13.2 after a dozen hours on the road simply because the battery was already so full from riding a dozen hours in a row at highway speeds). Brand new YTZ-14S battery went in the bike recently anyway (somewhat bigger capacity than stock, and much higher CCA's).

As far as the temp issue goes, in an ideal world, they'd be somewhere that actually ducts air constantly, but I couldn't find any better place that would keep them away from the forks, would keep them away from rain AND kept them within cable-distance of the bulbs.
I even considered building some tiny vents into the third eye panel to duct some additional air over them (doesn't have to be all that much). But I figured I'd just set them where they are now first and test 'em to see how they hold up to the temp here in the Florida summer (if they're going to auto-shut-down for temps, it'll be in the next couple months' weather at a traffic jam; in motion, they'll get some air just because of the gaps under the dash). The location puts about 1 mm on the backside of the ballast that's open with a gap leading below; there's about 1/2" on the front side between the fairings and the boxes. If I run into heat-issues, I'll report back and come up with another mod for it (possibly a half-dozen 1mm holes on each side of the third light, in the slanted portion of that panel directly above the third-eye lens).

Cheers,
=-= The CyberPoet