Mod: HID Motorcycle Light

You thought that was it for tonight! AHA, you were wrong!

Dad just returned with the camera, so instead of moping about my bike, I’ll show you how to wreck yours as well! Muhahaha.

Picture review is about to start, if you don’t want to know how to possibly break your motorcycle, then look away now. If you do want to know how to fit a super cool HID rig to your motorcycle, then read on.

Step 1: Prepare, Prepare, Prepare

If you want to know how to render your bike useless within the first 5 minutes, then don’t bother thinking about what you are doing before hand, just go for it. However I like to keep my stuff nice, so when I do decide to modify it, I weigh up the situation first, then prepare for it completely.

To prepare for fitting a HID rig to your motorcycle, you first need to buy a HID rig. I got this one off of the eBay for £30 all in. Now I never ever buy anything from Japan/Hong Kong, but one of the guys on the forum bought one and said there’s nothing to worry about, so I thought, hey, it’s only £30…

This is it:

This is a H4-3 rig, and can be found HERE

Within the box you get the Bulb, the Ballast (The transformer basically), the loom incl. control box and some adapter rings. Oh and some zip ties.

The HID bulb. I have to say I was a WEE bit disappointed with the built quality and the shutter that covers part of the bulb was a bit squint.

The Ballast.

These are the LED’s that I got to replace my previous efforts, one of which has started to strobe, so I was going along with a flashing white light on the front of my bike…not good! I have a 12 LED array and a 6 LED array, the 12 made it on the YamYam bike and the 6 went on Blair’s.

The 12 and the 6, BEEFCAKE.

Step 2: Prepare some more (the bike)

The bike is the place that you are going to be doing all the modifications to, so it is best if you get the bike in the optimum state to be in for the mod to run smoothly. It may sound anal, but there’s nothing worse than saying “lets go!!” only to find that you have to unscrew 4 panels and unbolt 6 bolts. Speaking of which, before you even start on the bike, it’s a good practice to get the tools that you need for the job ready. I mentioned it when I did the handlebar mod and it still stands. You don’t want to be looking for the right allen key half way through the job.

I thought I would be a bit different this time and go for a testosterone induced manly man work area, with manly things like wrenches and oil…well…sort of.

Yes. That is an ironing board.

The GSR with the seat, side panels, immobiliser unit, indicator pods, headlight assembly and tank off/unbolted.

The ignition and tank bolts

The bulb was the first to be fitted, since it’s the most important bit of the kit. I had to modify the rubber seal slightly as the rear end of the bulb is massive compared to the stock bulb. The boy on the forum decided to cut around the bulb and silicone it up with a bottle top to waterproof it. Instead of this approach, I cut the rubber seal enough to stretch it over the bulb but remain tight enough to create a seal, which worked fine.

Tracing the cables around the air filter, making sure that it doesn’t get snagged by the tank rubber mounts, one of which is at the far right of the photo. Always double and triple check that no wires are getting caught up in anything. You don’t want them to split and short on the frame or short and turn the light off when you are in the middle of the countryside…

The control box. You have 4 cables coming out of this. 1goes to the bulb, 1 goes to the battery, 1 goes to the ballast and 1 goes to the original headlight connector. I tried to get these cables are smooth and untangled as possible. I then zip tied them to various hard points along the frame to keep them in tight, remembering to keep them out of the way of the tank’s rubber mounts.

Finding a place to fit the ballast was the hardest part of this mod. I spent a good 30 minutes trying different positions and trying to retrofit the indicator pods to find if they would squeeze in.

In the end I tried putting the tank down to see if there was any space left and found there was a nice wee gap underneath the front of the petrol tank, which allowed it to sit snugly in there with the sticky back foam offering a little grip to keep it in place whilst I fit everything back together again.

This was everything in place, wired to the battery and all ready to go. I didn’t turn the bulb on yet, I wanted Dad to be there incase something went wrong.

“Ready? 1…2…3…BZZZZ PING OOOOOOOOOOO” It works!!! I don’t know if you have seen the Audi R8 advert? The “The slowest car we’ve built” advert? Well when the main lights come on it sort of flashes and then warms up, it’s really smart? Well that’s what these bad boys do! OOO. It’s a superb blue/white light, more blue than white I would say.

The LED’s work great with this colour of light!

Looks ace eh!

So there you go!

It was a pretty easy mod to do, with a few brain power moments that you need, but all you really do is plug the bulb in, mod the rubber seal (if you have one) trace the cables and wire them to the battery. No problems…

I’ll let you know about the FI warning once I phone the garage tomorrow.

Hope this has been an easy “tutorial” to follow.

Thanks again

Gordon