Bixenon Single Shutter Mod

[Toecutter]

FJRocket and Jestal,
Having watched the progress of the mods and the resulting comparisons, I am getting ready to put the lights on the bike.  I will have HID AUX lights as well so the last little bit of lumens is not as critical for me.  Given what you know, in the "bang for the buck" modifications, how far would you suggest going on hacking the lights?

I am thinking of flipping the bulb around and putting the slot and tab modification there and calling it good. 

Opinions?

A big +1 on Caba's question. Thanks for asking first. I too am in the process of modification and was wondering how best to go about attaching the shutter tab. I assume it needs to be on the outside of the shutter. Do either of you have any successful real world experience after doing this to know if JB Weld will hold the tab in place permanently? Or is some other method working out better. I hope to only have to do this once. And thanks again for the R & D on this project. Any more available pictures would also be greatly appreciated, especially of Jestal's mods.

I'm also posting this to the other thread.

 

[FJRocket]

The slot and tab mod is pretty good. You can do jestal's mod without having to worry about gluing or riveting. However, I think the single shutter mod lets out more light.

Problem is whether or not JB will hold it. Riveting to the taller of the two shutters certainly will work. And it's probably worth the trouble to really open up the bottom of the light and rivet on a single shutter mod. Now if you have some super duper high heat resistant epoxie, then I'd probably just glue it. But that's your decision.

If I had HID AUX lights, I wouldn't bother doing ANY high beam mods. If your HID aux lights are going to be your high beams, save yourself all the trouble, because the amount of light, expecially considering we haven't eliminated the dead zone, just won't be worth it.

Having said that, I don't think the bixenon HID high beam hack is all that tough to do, whether you are doing the jestal mod or the single shutter mod.

 

[FJRocket]

I assume it needs to be on the outside of the shutter. Do either of you have any successful real world experience after doing this to know if JB Weld will hold the tab in place permanently? Or is some other method working out better. I hope to only have to do this once. And thanks again for the R & D on this project. Any more available pictures would also be greatly appreciated, especially of Jestal's mods. 
I'm also posting this to the other thread.

The safe way to mod these shutters would be to rivet little angle pieces to the VERTICAL part of the shutters. That little angle piece needs to sit INSIDE. It can also go outside the vertical part, but there is NO CLEARANCE UNDER the shutter for anything. So you either bond on top, or rivet to the side.

Real world experience using JB on previous stuff shows it will hold up fine, but that is NOT under the heat conditions of these lights. Jestal already tried using it on his bench test and it did NOT stay. The aluminum and JB will be SOOooOoo close to the light source that it is getting seriously baked. So he riveted his. At this point, my two extensions are both epoxied, and will be until they fall off. Then I may look for a higher heat resistant epoxy resin to use as a bonding agent. I can rivet on one light, but I cut the verticals down on the other, so I have no choice but to bond on that one.

So far my HID's only have about 20 minutes on them in the bike, so it's WAY too soon to tell. When my new Widders get here, I'll do a little more riding.

The safe bet is to pop a couple rivets in them. Unless someone has a better idea?!

 

[Toecutter]

So, were you guys able to rivet the shields in place on an intact mechanism or does it need to be disassembled further than having the bulb taken out? It looks like some delicate work. Gonna be rather challenging for my fat little fumbly fingers. In checking out the setup, I concur that the shutter extension is the way to go. The moving channel just doesn't travel far enough to allow a decent sized window to be coverd by an extension of the cap. Why couldn't the original designers get this right in the first place?

It's easy to see how much light is blocked by the channel. I guess that's why good ol' Yankee ingenuity is one of the greatest forces on earth. May the force be with you!

 

[FJRocket]

So, were you guys able to rivet the shields in place on an intact mechanism or does it need to be disassembled further than having the bulb taken out? It looks like some delicate work. Gonna be rather challenging for my fat little fumbly fingers. In checking out the setup, I concur that the shutter extension is the way to go. The moving channel just doesn't travel far enough to allow a decent sized window to be coverd by an extension of the cap. Why couldn't the original designers get this right in the first place?It's easy to see how much light is blocked by the channel. I guess that's why good ol' Yankee ingenuity is one of the greatest forces on earth. May the force be with you!

I've been pop riveting and buck riveting a kit airplane together, and I thought the rivet work on these lights would be too delicate, so I have opted not to use that method. However, I already had mine glued when Jestal suggested pop rivets.

IMO, I wouldn't try to take it apart to rivet it. Just be very careful with the shutters closed and start with a very small drill bit and work your way up.

You could also use a clip, a clamp, a crimp or some other mechanical type of attachment, too. Heck, you could even use a tiny sheet metal screw or nut/bolt. The paperclip technique that I showed on the jestal mod thread would probably work fine, although you'd probably have to reshape it to fit a small surface area. There may be lots of good choices for attachment. It should be light weight, though, and of course heat resistant.

I was pretty nervous about the riveting. That's why I used epoxy. My preference would be to just find a different kind of super heat resistant epoxy if the original doesn't stay put.

 

[FJRocket]

Warchild locked the other HI/LO bixenon mod thread started by Jestal. There are some good ideas and discussion there, and some that weren't covered in this thread. I thought I would just provide a link to that thread in case it gets lost in the shuffle.

Jestal's Mod Thread

That thread shows a fairly simple way to mod the lights. It doesn't let out as much light as the single shutter mod, but the technique is very similar. You might want to take the time to read it if you haven't already done so. The initial steps in getting the light ready are the same: invert the light source and cut the channel. Again: Don't cut the verticals of the shutters.

 

[jestal]

edited

 

[Toecutter]

Thanks for the detailed answer! It will make my job much less frightening. You guys rock! :clap: :clap: :clap:

 

[Toecutter]

edited

Damn, so much for the aforementioned detailed answer.

 

[FJRocket]

I've ridden about 7 hours since using JB Weld to hold the shutters on. So far, so good, but time will tell...

Winter sucks. I hate that salty, sandy slush.