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Archive through October 31, 2010Greg_e30 10-31-10  11:06 am
         

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Petebueller
Posted on Sunday, October 31, 2010 - 06:09 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Custodian/Admin Only)

Like you say Greg the Bezels won't fit. If you get the height right the holes in the fairing won't need to be trimmed.

My low beam is trimmed at the top, just a fraction, because the bracket was too high to get the final adjustment, but there is a fair gap at the bottom on both sides. An 1/8" lower and it would have worked without trimming.

I was thinking of slot cutting the holes that mount to the headlight support bracket and getting the height right before making the mark 2.
The friends who want me to help them with the bracket might be able to contact you if you are planning to produce them. Yours looks really good. Mine is just a 2.5 mm alloy sheet with nothing cut out. It is good and rigid and the lights don't vibrate at all, but getting the ECM out is a pain. That could be fixed by either cutting the sheet down or having a cutout for the ECM. You won't have the same problem with yours.

I didn't go down the road of building a whole new bracket. The stock bracket is cheap and it was a whole lot less effort to reuse it.

The twinlight high beam goes down to 18% of full brightness. At 35% it is softer on the eye than the low beam. The position lights that we run here are 25W incandescents and the twinlight driver can match the same apparent brightness of the position light, but be white instead of yellow and because the source is from the centre (the position light is in the bottom) it looks like a headlight and not something that is broken.

I've had my Hellas on for a bit over 3 years, and I notice your units are quite a lot different. Yours are H9s and mine are H7s which is one difference, but the front glass on your reflectors is also very different.
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Greg_e
Posted on Sunday, October 31, 2010 - 07:40 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Custodian/Admin Only)

These lights have only been on the market for about 9 or 10 months and have the shutter built into the fixture which is different from the BiXenon which still requires the external servo. From what I am told they are a hot item and difficult to keep in stock. The fixture is completely sealed so it doesn't need the plastic cover that many other fixtures need. And most importantly it has DOT certification as well as a model for EU countries that costs almost twice as much.

Mine does have some issues, the black plastic ball sockets will require that the stock plastic mount be cut away, I'll have pictures of the plastic mount modifications coming soon. I just really hope I've done my measuring correctly so I don't need to cut out a new piece. If I have to cut again I'm going to do a bunch more measuring and CAD work so I don't need to scribe anything on the metal and cut from the DRO on my mill. I did buy enough aluminum for a total of four pieces, hopefully I won't need to use them to fix mistakes. At the moment I need to move the cutout for the gray vent and probably move the screw hole on one arm because of that move. I'm just going to grind the hole larger and see how things go.

Once I get the mounting finished, I need to start on the wiring. Need a new 12 volt supply, going to a new fuse, going to a new relay. The relay will turn on with the stock low beam wires, the stock high beam wires will change the shutter. I should have all the pieces I need arriving soon for the electrical work, and the only part lacking might be some different colors in wire, I have red and black now but might want yellow and whatever the high beam color might happen to be (if I can find it).

I'm hoping this whole thing looks extremely factory installed, like it was designed to be there. Also the best part is I bought the extra plastic mount so my cycle is still on the road with the garbage lights.

My alternate thoughts were to use two of the 50mm low beam modules and two of the 50mm high beam modules and remove all of the cut out in the fairing. This would be difficult because the charging system can't really handle the 20 amps of lights and the rest of the load.
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Petebueller
Posted on Sunday, October 31, 2010 - 10:58 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Custodian/Admin Only)



The relays can fit neatly in the fairing support bracket webbing either side of the ECM.

I like the idea of the shutters you have with yours. It was what I'd hoped to find when I was looking at the time. The Bi-Xenons were not a practical option.

I looked at the 50mm as well but I'm glad I went with the 90mm.
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Greg_e
Posted on Sunday, October 31, 2010 - 11:17 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Custodian/Admin Only)

There is an empty spot in the factory relay block and an empty spot in the factory fuse block that I'm going to use, just waiting for the contacts to arrive. Then I'll use a 15 amp fuse and stock relay for both lights, they should be under 15 amps draw (around 10A at 12 volts).

The price on the Bixenon pretty much rule them out as an option for all but the most expensive builds, not a build I am likely to ever make since dropping more than $1000 on the headlights seems kind of crazy. I'll have about $350 into this project by the time I'm done, still kind of high.

Think I can sell the mounting plate? I thought about getting some waterjet cut and seeing if American Sport Bike might want to sell them. Only issue is that I don't think there is enough interest in either the lights I'm using or the ones that you have which use the same mounting system and should have similar dimensions for the length. Both have 84mm spacing on the mounting screws so they should both line up the same.
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Petebueller
Posted on Monday, November 01, 2010 - 02:02 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Custodian/Admin Only)

I'd be interested in stocking a few at SRWmoto if you get them working.

I paid AU$650 trade for the pair. At the time that would have been about US$580. Retail they were more than AU$900. rally lights were selling them for US$59 each for a 65W H8 but I needed the UK low which was H7 so it didn't make sense to have 1 H7 and 1 H8.

My high and low had slightly different spacing which was also a pain. At least with the ones you have the units are identical. $350 is OK but if the UK version is going to be more expensive it makes it harder.

Do you have any idea how far yours will poke out. These are mine


They aren't too bad but I wouldn't want much further. Your bracket will be in roughly the same position as mine so it depends on the length of the units.
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Petebueller
Posted on Monday, November 01, 2010 - 02:51 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Custodian/Admin Only)

Using the fuse box and relay box looks neat but it will cost a bit of advantage you can get.

If you measure the voltage drop between the battery and the lights through the stock wiring without the bike running you get .5-.6V which isn't much of a worry. If you have it running so that the battery is charging at 13.8V and the coils are drawing power you get a drop of about 1.5V with one light on and 2.5V with two bulbs on. The losses are in the earths as much as the lives.

By running thicker live and separate earth wires to the lights you can get 20% more power on one bulb and 40% more with 2. The drop in brightness is greater than the drop in power.

Accessories should have the fuses as close as possible to the battery - unless you are going to take power after the main fuse (which is close to the battery). It is not only the accessories that need to be protected by the fuse. The battery also needs to be protected from a short otherwise it can catch fire or explode.

It sounds like you are going to run a separate live up to the fuse box. That can be the 15A fuse. I'd suggest another 25A fuse on the live, as close as you can get to the battery.
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Greg_e
Posted on Monday, November 01, 2010 - 01:13 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Custodian/Admin Only)

I'm going to grab power after the 30 amp fuse, probably somewhere inside the hard plastic guide that holds the wires around the engine. That is where they splice the main feed from the fuse to the rest of the cycle, and also where it does some things going down to the regulator. Not sure what kind of splice they used, but it looks like the wires are simply soldered together and covered with marine grade heat shrink (the stuff with the hot glue inside the shrink tube).

The EU lights at RallySports were an extra $140 USD each, so it may not make a lot of sense for EU users (still cheaper than the BiXenon). I have a feeling that the conversions in all of Europe are more popular so they can charge a higher price for that style.

In theory these will only stick out between 15mm and 20mm farther than the stock lights, I'm not sure when I'll have a better idea since I need to measure the stock lights and see how far they stick out past the mount to compare with what I have. I can live with the way yours stick out. and probably mine will be identical. No matter what they will look odd because of the flat glass on the front, that's fine since how many Buells will look like this.
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Greg_e
Posted on Monday, November 01, 2010 - 09:07 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Custodian/Admin Only)

A quick measurement and it looks like it won't stick out any more than stock if there is room in back.



Kind of ugly work on the plastic.


Looks really good and seems to be going together much too easily so I'm waiting for the large setback that is certainly waiting in the shadows.
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Petebueller
Posted on Tuesday, November 02, 2010 - 01:59 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Custodian/Admin Only)

It looks good.
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Greg_e
Posted on Sunday, November 07, 2010 - 07:26 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Custodian/Admin Only)

A few more pictures:




They almost fit in the fairing, but almost is not good enough so I have some trimming to do, looks like about 1/8 inch all around needs to be removed.
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Petebueller
Posted on Monday, November 08, 2010 - 04:04 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Custodian/Admin Only)

Looks really good Greg

The diameter must be a little bigger than my reflectors.
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Greg_e
Posted on Monday, November 08, 2010 - 09:53 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Custodian/Admin Only)

And it tapers to a larger diameter so the left and right sides of the fairing will need to be cut as an oval.
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Wildman4x4nut
Posted on Monday, November 08, 2010 - 08:02 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Custodian/Admin Only)

Greg_e,
I would buy the plate from you if you were to make them. I doubt you would sell 100's of them but I would guess you would sell 40-50 maybe over time.
I'll have to go back and reread the whole thread but I like what your doing and really would like to upgrade to some brighter lights that worked better. And the idea of having 2 low's and 2 high's is great too.
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Petebueller
Posted on Tuesday, November 09, 2010 - 02:58 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Custodian/Admin Only)

I'd suggest that you start with 5-10 to see how they go. I'd be interested in one to check out to start with. I'd like to have the option of using the older style Hellas like I have, to keep cost down and also I know the beam pattern of mine and I like it.
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Johnboy777
Posted on Tuesday, November 09, 2010 - 09:02 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Custodian/Admin Only)

Hey, Greg_e

Brilliant - thank you for posting.

I'm wondering if that set up could be made to work on a Uly - I'd love to have those lights.

.
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Greg_e
Posted on Tuesday, November 09, 2010 - 09:40 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Custodian/Admin Only)

You would need to make your own mount for the Uly since the S models used different headlights and mounts. Might be easier to make but I don't have one to look at and prototype on so I'm not going to be doing the work unless someone wants to donate a good working Uly with hard luggage and clean title for testing, ownership would need to be transferred to me as part of the process.

As far as making more, I may run through the 3 extra pieces of metal that I have on hand and mill them manually. The extra work I did on the computer should let me get the process down to about 3 hours or maybe 4 hours. Until the headlights are in stock at more places having the mounts available makes no sense. And it will probably take a few weeks before I even have time to think about milling more pieces.
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Johnboy777
Posted on Tuesday, November 09, 2010 - 02:31 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Custodian/Admin Only)

""You would need to make your own mount for the Uly since the S models used different headlights and mounts.""

Greg,

Do you have the SAE or the ECE model?

Thanks
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Greg_e
Posted on Tuesday, November 09, 2010 - 04:46 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Custodian/Admin Only)

I used the SAE/DOT version to cut down on the grief if anyone decided to try and give me a ticket or fail an inspection. It is also about $100 less expensive.

There are other lights that would probably work better for an S/Uly.
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Greg_e
Posted on Saturday, November 13, 2010 - 11:44 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Custodian/Admin Only)

Just left a review on Amazon for these and noticed that they now list them a $124 with free shipping, or $40 a pair less than I paid.

I cut off the stock shutter connectors because I could not find the mate anywhere, I used Deutsch DTM since you can buy them all over easily and cheaply. Going to go and check the mounting in a little while and them maybe start on wiring. Still waiting for the relay block connectors to arrive

(Message edited by greg_e on November 13, 2010)
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Buelltroll
Posted on Saturday, November 13, 2010 - 12:15 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Custodian/Admin Only)

Holy crap man you have WAAAY too much free time on your hands, WAAAY too much effort....
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Ducxl
Posted on Saturday, November 13, 2010 - 01:48 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Custodian/Admin Only)

Outstanding work Greg.I remember years back fighting to get BMC to replace mine long after the warrantee expired.They did.And at the time the Hella 90mm was a very popular mod. i wish i'd undertaken.

It'd be cool to get the wireEDM guy at work to cut me a plate....

First rate job there
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Greg_e
Posted on Saturday, November 13, 2010 - 03:12 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Custodian/Admin Only)


quote:

Holy crap man you have WAAAY too much free time on your hands, WAAAY too much effort....




I am not a hack, if it is not done right, it will not be done at all. If there was an easier way that will work as well and still be legal, I would have done it. Just jamming HID systems in the stock projectors is something that I should not comment on because people will be insulted.

If all the materials are collected in one place, this is a 1 day job to completion now that most of the prep work is laid out. The electrical is the last challenge and once I demonstrate it anyone with this bracket will be able to do this mod. (to my standards) in about 5 hours. It would go a lot faster if I didn't keep stopping to take photos of the steps. But I have a feeling that some people are really liking the step by step progress so they can see what goes into doing something like this, might help them take on a project that they have always wanted to make. Also keep in mind that the bracket you see should work on all of the Hella 90mm lighting fixtures, that means BiXenon, low beam, high beam, or utility lights (pencil beam eye burners).
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Ducxl
Posted on Sunday, November 14, 2010 - 06:15 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Custodian/Admin Only)

But I have a feeling that some people are really liking the step by step progress so they can see what goes into doing something like this, might help them take on a project that they have always wanted to make.

I resemble that remark.Persuading my WireEDM guy to work with me will take finessing tho.I've got him hooked
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Gunut75
Posted on Sunday, November 14, 2010 - 07:05 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Custodian/Admin Only)

I'm sittin on the sidelines watchin. I think your doing a great job Greg! I should email you pics of my shifter, rear brake, and a few other parts I've done like this. Good for you brother!
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Greg_e
Posted on Sunday, November 14, 2010 - 01:32 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Custodian/Admin Only)

I'm doing this on a hand crank Harbor Freight micro mill with a kit DRO, it could be done without the DRO but it would be harder and take more time. CNC would make it trivial.
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Steve_mackay
Posted on Monday, November 15, 2010 - 02:03 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Custodian/Admin Only)

Yeah, I liked my way of doing the Hella project much better : )

CNCs do make it easier.







I did this project about 2 1/2 years ago. 17K miles later, they still rock!

far brighter than the stock firebolt lights, even WITH HIDs. And that's using the bulbs that came with the Hellas.
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Greg_e
Posted on Monday, November 15, 2010 - 10:03 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Custodian/Admin Only)

Hella does not make garbage!

I did find out that I need to remove the lower outside corner of the light to clear the fairing, that means the Bi-Xenon with the external shutter will not work! The shutter servo attaches to one of those corners.

I need to open the fairing up just a touch more and then I'm just waiting for connectors to arrive, it will be four weeks on Friday since I ordered the connectors.
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Johnboy777
Posted on Monday, November 15, 2010 - 06:37 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Custodian/Admin Only)

Hey, Steve_mackay

On the second photo down from the top ... are you sure you've got those Hella's labeled correctly.

Your labeled low looks like a high - and vice versa.

John
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Firebolt020283
Posted on Monday, November 15, 2010 - 08:39 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Custodian/Admin Only)

I am not sure of the point of all that work when i just popped in one of those silverstar bulbs in my low beam and I swear it is brighter than I need. Next time I go to a auto parts store for something I am going to pick one up for my hi beam too and I did not have to do any of this mess.
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Petebueller
Posted on Monday, November 15, 2010 - 10:09 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Custodian/Admin Only)

Johnboy777
The are labeled wrong but they are fitted on the right sides.

Firebolt020283
I've found that these give better vision than any change that can be done with the stock setup including HIDs.

They give better distance and side vision than my car which has 6 Halogen bulbs working on high beam with driving lights.

I can now see roos on the roadside before they are born.
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Johnboy777
Posted on Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - 05:43 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Custodian/Admin Only)

I'm thinking about fitting two of these Hella low beam units to my Uly
and using two PIAA 510 driving lights switched to my high beams.

.
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Steve_mackay
Posted on Wednesday, November 17, 2010 - 02:49 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Custodian/Admin Only)

Johnboy, yeah, they were labeled wrong.

Firebolt020283, if you don't see the point, you've never seen the difference. It's truly night and day difference. And if you ride through deer country in the wee hours of the morning, there is no such thing as too much light. The stock firebolt light just have crappy optics. No bulb will correct that.

Pete is correct, The Hellas create more light than any car I've ever had. It's worth the effort IMHO.
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Greg_e
Posted on Wednesday, November 17, 2010 - 04:36 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Custodian/Admin Only)

On my car my Micro DE fog lights create more light than my main headlights, and they have a 2 diameter inch lens!

Been trying to deal with some different projects so no update on my cycle since the last update, need to put the battery on a charger.
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Greg_e
Posted on Wednesday, December 08, 2010 - 11:27 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Custodian/Admin Only)

The damn relay terminals are finally here... But it's also 20 degrees out and no heat where I can work on it so I'm not sure when I will pick this back up.
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