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Web maintained
by JohnnyRide
Nthegruv@comcast.net
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If you want to revolutionalize
the lighting on your bike, you have to do this.
There is a site out there named
WWW.VVME.COM who
sells inexpensive HID conversion kits for under $100
which contains 2 HI/LOW bulbs, 2 ballasts with
igniters and the rest of the wiring harnesses
required to put off the conversion. Included in that
is the controller for the bulbs which cause the
high/low effect. When ordering you have to pay
attention to the ballast size, as there are 2 sizes,
I went with the smaller ones.
You also need to watch
the type of bulb as there are 2 types of high low
bulbs. One has 2 bulbs, the HID "bulb" and a
smaller, non HID bulb which is suppose to act as a
high beam. I found found this type setup to be
substandard
for quality lighting.
The other type of bulb is the
Bi-Luxon version which just has the HID bulb but it
has a sliding reflector system around the bulb that
redirects the light to the High Beam portion of the
housing when you flick over to high beam. When
you kick these up on high, it is nothing less than
amazing, a panoramic blast of brilliant white light,
4300K is what I bought on the color side, which, I
swear is 45 degrees in spread. What this means
is that a tremendous amount of light also hits the
road and on both sides of the road are illuminated
striking as such. Wildlife can not hide, there is
just no way. With that kind of spread, it is a bit
harder to out run the headlights in a curve. Well
assuming there isn't oncoming traffic, because they
would go off in a ditch somewhere from the Eyes of
God blasting away the darkness. And, we don't want
that. Thank God we have that 7 position adjustment
knob on the dash as well as the fine tuning
adjustment on the bottom side of the headlight
motor.
I was a bit pessimistic
about ordering form a company located in China but I
am going to rate this customer service group on a
scale of 1 to 10 with a 15. Yep, they are off the
chart. I had a hic-up with my credit card and got
billed for 4 transactions. At $108 per instance this
wasn't cheap and I was thinking, crap, China?!?!?
I'll never get my money back, I am screwed. Nope,
not the case, I spoke with Owen, their Sales Manager
in China, and we got everything worked out, and my
refunds secured. What a guy!! I was happy, relieved
and impressed.
After the install, I
ought, you know, I ought to go ahead and order a
spares kit so to speak in case the design changes
and I can't get the same thing again. I ordered the
replacement and due to me getting in a hurry, I
ordered the wrong bulb kit. (They one that you don't
want to order that is not the all-in-one bulb. I get
the kit, open it, crap, wrong one. Doh!! So, I
figure I'll keep the 2 ballasts and igniters and
scrap the bulbs and just order one more bulb. I just
didn't want to deal with shipping back to China. So
I order one bulb, was charged for one bulb and what
do you think I received???? I think Owen saw what I
did and figured out what was going on because I
received, 2 bulbs and also a complete wiring harness
that includes the Light Controller Unit for the
price of 1 bulb. EXCELLENT!!!!
So that is why they
rate a 15 on a 1-10 scale, excellence in customer
service and proactive thinking.
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Probably the most
cumbersome chore is figuring out where you
are going to mount this stuff. I went
under the front cowl like most people do.
They offer a smaller digital ballast and
that is the version I bought. They are
the 2 silver looking squares which are shown
in the pictures to the left. As you notice
they do have milled mounting tabs as part of
the ballast casing.
There is a
considerable amount of wiring harness to hid
since it was really designed for an
automobile. However, It is possible for all
of it to live in the cowling area. I
guess I could have cut it down to size, but
it fit so why mess with it. Some find
it easier to take off all the fairing
plastic to do this but I basically just
released the nose cone of the bike and
tilted it downward to gain access.
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Here is
the right driver side bulb installed. You
will have to cut the opening of the dust
boot wider so that the bulb can fit though
it. No other mods to the lighting area are
required or needed. The bulb is actually a
2-piece bulb, it will make sense when you
see it. You put in the H4 frame of the
bulb, put the pain in the butt bulb
retention spring back down,
slip on the boot cover then the actual bulb
portion of this assemble slides in the hold
and click locks with a quarter clockwise
turn.
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Just a picture of
the HID bulb installed into the reflector.
As you can see it is a bit different looking
than a standard H4 bulb |
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The thing about
HID lights is that when they "startup", they
don't like to be interrupted in that process
nor do they like to be turned off and right
back on for that matter. I guess technically
this might be called, "hot re-strike
time", for lack of term. So when you turn
the key on and the lights come on and then
hit the start button, the headlights are cut
off so the battery doesn't bare the load of
the lights while trying to start the engine.
Stock lights do this and so do the HIDS.
You will need to
retrain yourself on how to start the bike
otherwise you might have one light fail to
start or both. No damage occurs to the HID,
you just have to restart them if this
occurs.
What you want to do
is either wire yourself up a switch
controlling a relay you can flip on after
you start the bike or, flip the RUN switch
on, on the right handle bar, press and hold
the STARTER BUTTON and then turn the key on.
That way the lights don't start until after
the bike does.
I will try to take
some pictures at night but no promises.
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