HID H4 headlight HI/LO operation

[FJRocket]

Here's a little pic of my Jestal Mod Shroud Clip. I just used a small paper clip. Heck, why re-invent the wheel?

Sheesh, Rad, feel better? Why not just tell them to put FREAKIN HID's IN THERE WHILE THEY'RE AT IT?????

 

[Warchild]

If the center of the light source was 6mm back, wouldn't I be better off moving the slot in the channel back nearly that far?

That is EXACTLY correct!

I'm thinking I should split the difference anyway and extend the slot rearward 3mm or so.

Try that first. Then TEST, TEST, TEST! If all looks good, take it aback another mm. Then test again. Repeat until you are achieve the 6mm disctance. If you can do this without introducing other (yet unknown) problems, this is going to be about as good as it gets using this approach to solving the high-beam issue

 

[Grumpy]

Jim -
If you read my post (the 10th one down on the page 1 of this thread), you'll see that's exactly what I am going to do

Sorry about that.........I think I've caught up now. IMO the D2R capsule lamp should work nicely for your high beam. The only critical part is getting the arc tube in the middle of the high beam focal point, which I think you've already determined is 6 mm back. I can't see where having a shield over the end of the lamp would be of any benefit on High Beam only operation, rather it would only decrease the amount of light coming out of the headlight.

FYI the light comes out of the arc tube purpenduclar to the surface of the arc tube. The easiest way to envision this is to think of the light coming out in the shape of a small donut around the arc tube.

The only other concern I have about this conversion is the unknown protective coating on the reflectors. These HID lamps put out a lot of UV as compared to the filament lamps that they were origonally designed to handle. UV can be really tough on coatings, but if it's a problem it'll show up pretty quickly.

Jim

 

[jestal]

rocket, thanks for the pics. That is exactly what I did.

Attaching the shadow tab is much easier if you simply remove the end cap. There are two lock notches, one on each side. Depress the little tab in the lock notches and the end cap will slide right off. Lay your tab on the structure under the end cap and slide it back on over the tab. The end cap will trap it in place with no clips or glueing required. I hooked my tab over the end of the structure so that the end cap would not pull it out as it slide on over it.

Remember that the length of the window is governed by the travel of the channel when it goes from LO to HI beam. It can only be as long as the travel or it will not cover when the channel returns to the LO beam position. As you move the window you have to lengthen the tab each time so that it is long enough to cover the window.....which ends up being the other end of the window if you catch my drift.

Put the light bulb into the lens without the mechanism and adjust the focal length to see if it makes much difference before opening the window further. It did not seem to in my tests so far. Just opening up the window provided the main improvement.

 

[FJRocket]

I left the light sources in the factory position. I just went out and garage tested BOTH Jestal modified lights. Yep, there is more high beam, but not substantially so. And the color is quite different than the low beam. Nowhere even close to the intensity of the low beam.

Still a dead zone, too. That is going to be the real kicker.

Guess I'll try moving the light source back in it's housing, next. How does that thing pop apart again?

Is that dead zone that is above the low beam cut off a factor of the light source mechanism, the focal length location of the light source, or the lens? Combination of all, I suppose. HOW DO WE DEFEAT THAT???

 

[FJRocket]

I'm thinking I should split the difference anyway and extend the slot rearward 3mm or so.

Try that first. Then TEST, TEST, TEST!

I went ahead and did move the slot rearward to the vertical support on the bixenon mechanism in the second capsule. So I have the right high beam opened just under (slightly aft) the light source, and the left high beam opened about 3 mm farther rearward.

Now I nead darkness to test ride. Although I may try relocating the light souces to see if I can eliminate the dreaded dead zone while still in my nice heated garage. Back to the tinkering.

BTW Jestal, I thought about putting the shroud under the octagonal nose cap, but I figured I might have to take the shroud on and off several times. I was afraid I would ruin the tabs.

 

[FJRocket]

Ok, I moved the light source back in the housing by removing the circlip and then adjusting the light source as far rearward as the notches would allow. That is only 2 notches which MIGHT be 2 mm.

Results: Low beam gets fuzzy, high beam doesn't seem to improve and the dead zone is still there. I'll leave everything as is and wait for darkness and head out of the garage for a real world test.

At this point, I am NOT hopefull that these mods are going to make a substantial difference in eliminating the short comings of the "traditional" Bixenon HID setup.

 

[jestal]

Rats. Thought maybe we were on to something. I'll try to get my FJR reflector out tonight and do some more testing in it since that IS the subject at hand.

When the HID bulb element is in the original position and the actuator channel is in the HI beam position can you look directly straight thru the window in the channel and see the middle of the bulb? I spaced my window so that it is directly centered over the bulb element in the HI beam position for maximum light flow or minimum shading.

With my HID bulb on and the capsule in the Hi beam mode and I look at it with the welding helment straight on I can hardly tell a difference between the looking at the high beam side or the lo beam side. There is so much light thru the window that you can't tell the difference.

I cut the sides of my channel down much like you did and also went inside and polished the inside and outside sides of the channel for maximum reflectivity although I suspect the brass or whatever it is will tarnish with time. I also trimmed the sides of the channel to make the leading edges sharp and to thin the sides of the channel up a bit in the area of the window. Mine are pretty skinny.....

I'm going to try just putting the bulb into the reflector to see what the maximum high beam pattern might be. I was thinking that possibly the hi beam portion of the reflector is part of the problem not necessarily the bulb or the HID capsule and shadowing or focal position of the bulb..... Maybe it will never work with the HID bulb due to the way the bulb produces light. With the amount of light coming thru that window it made a huge difference with the other reflectors I was using but they were all the older, more conventional headlight housings with the "prescription" in the lense of the housing not in the reflector like the FJR has.

 

[Warchild]

IMO the D2R capsule lamp should work nicely for your high beam. 

NO! The D2R capsule is not to be used for any of these experiments!

The D2R was an early-generation attempt to mimic a Low-Beam H4.... and it worked only to a marginal degree, and still let too much light scatter hit the high-beam portion of the reflector housing.

I can't see where having a shield over the end of the lamp would be of any benefit on High Beam only operation, rather it would only decrease the amount of light coming out of the headlight.

No, that's not correct, or rather, it doesn't give the effect we are after. Ask FJRocket what he experienced when he removed the nose cone.

It is the HID light source against the reflector housing that is providing us with these incredible results we see when the filament is placed in the correct focal point position. Thus far (appearantly), only the low beam is giving us the results we are after, because it is in the correct focal point position.

And like I've been saying, we are only really going to see the *massive* improvement in the high beam output when we finally re-position the HID filament (vice the light source coming from the low-beam focal point) to the correct focal point for High Beam as depicted by the standard H4 bulb:

 

[jestal]

Ok, I moved the light source back in the housing by removing the circlip and then adjusting the light source as far rearward as the notches would allow. That is only 2 notches which MIGHT be 2 mm.
Results: Low beam gets fuzzy, high beam doesn't seem to improve and the dead zone is still there. I'll leave everything as is and wait for darkness and head out of the garage for a real world test.

At this point, I am NOT hopefull that these mods are going to make a substantial difference in eliminating the short comings of the "traditional" Bixenon HID setup.

But is the bulb element aligned with the window you cut in the channel now that you have moved the bulb??? The window must stay aligned with the bulb. That is why I was moving or shimming the entire H4 capsule further and further out thus leaving the window position in a constant fixed orientation to the bulb. If moving the assembly made a difference THEN I was going to move just the bulb and recut the window accordingly.....and lengthen the tab to cover it completely.

 

[FJRocket]

The window is NOT directly under the source, but it is "perpendicular" from the center of the source to the reflecter. (sorta) The vast majority of light source is visible through the window, i.e. there is not a lot of offset between the channel and the source.

I'm really bored, so I went ahead and cut a new notch in the source housing and clipped the source back at what I interpret as 6 mm. I also cut the channel.

This is within 2 or 3 mm from being as much as you can remove from the channel. The whole thing went from bad to worse. And yes, the light source is still visible underneath. The dead zone went away, but there is essentially no dilineation between high and low beams.

I think the only way you are going to get a decent pattern with this high beam is to invert the capsule with the source back 6mm and use it as a high beam only lamp. I think that's where Warchild is heading...

Boy, I have a bunch of stuff to test when it gets dark! I haven't given up yet.

 

[FJRocket]

I can't see where having a shield over the end of the lamp would be of any benefit on High Beam only operation, rather it would only decrease the amount of light coming out of the headlight.

Warchild is right on this one. I tried. HOLY COW! Removing the end cap lets a lot more light out, to be sure. But it's not a controlled beam cast, and lemme tell you it's like a laser coming out of there. WAY too bright for anything remotely resembling traffic. Mothers, hide your children!!

Now if you were looking for the "Eyes of God" concept in stand alone high beams, then removing the caps would be great. If you are using them as flood lights, out in the open all by your lonesome, then heck yeah, take those octagonal caps off of there. Otherwise, leave 'em alone.

BTDT!

 

[Grumpy]

OK, I'll butt out.

I figured we'd like one headlight with a highly controlled low beam and another headlight with a maximum amount of light being projected down the road. This latter one can only be used when there's no oncoming traffic.

If you look at the filament lamp, there is a reflector built into the low beam.....it's very close to the lamp and is the major contributor to the excellent cutoff. Conversely, in the same lamp the high beam has no reflector close to the filament and the light from this filament is reflected by the total headlight reflector. The shield on the end of the filament lamp is only effective on the low beam.

For the HID lamps to work properly they have to mimic the location and optics of the filament lamp. The low beam does this very well.

What I'm suggesting is that the high beam will produce the best performance, i.e. produce the most unshielded light, when it is the type that, like the filament lamp, has no built in shields/ reflectors and only uses the headlight reflector. With approximately three times the stock setup it should be a really really bright sucker!!

Now I'll go away.

Jim

 

[Warchild]

OK, I'll butt out.

Oh, c'mon now.... don't take it that way. Everyone wants to see if this issue can be solved....

It sounds like you may have come in late on this discussion and/or haven't read the thread in it's entirety (both this one, and toward the end of the "Self-Buy" thread).

Here are the germane comments (from page one of this thread) that I made this past Saturday:

It is an exercise in frustration to try to make the Hi/Lo version work in an optimal manner without the ability to physically place the "filament" of the HID capsule in the correct position to achieve the proper focal point (for either configuration, high-beam, or low-beam).
Moving it partially to the correct position isn't going to cut the mustard. It must be *precisely*, *exactly* in the correct position. No other measure will do. None.

Therefore.... here is my solution that I'll be implementing:

To my eyes, one properly positioned low-beam HID capsule is still superior to two low-beam (55w) halogen bulbs. So I intend to leave my current right (deer-side) HID Low-Beam Only capsule alone, and let it operate just as it does now. It will always remain lit as long as the engine is running.

The left capsule, however, I am going to turn into a "High-beam only" H4 HID capsule.

I am going to do this by simply re-positioning the HID capsule EXACTLY 6mm rearward from it's current orientation. 6mm is the distance from the *center* of the Low-beam filament, to the *center* of the high-beam filament. This re-positioning will be permanent, and will be accomplished by either i) introducing a 6mm shim to the existing base of the H4 HID capsule, or ii) "withdrawing" the capsule exactly 6mm from where it resides in the low-beam only holder now.

Additionally, the Low-beam holder will of course have to have the Dremal applied to it such that the "filament" has the best unhindered, 360-degree view of the reflector housing that it can (knowing, of course, that two small "legs" of the existing metal shield must remain in order to retain the nose cone. Retaining the latter is important).

There are a couple reasons why FJRocket is still seeing a "dead zone" even after the mods have been made. Chief among these is that there are structures sill in the way that prevent the filament from having an unhindered, 360-degree view of the reflector housing (that, and the fact the filament is not positioned for the correct focal point for its high beam configuration).

I hope to solve that with the approach I am taking. There's no guarantee it's going to work, obviously.... but I think it just might. Won't know until I test.

 

[FJRocket]

Had a nice ride last night. The Jestal Mod did improve the quantity of high beam. With the changes to the light source element location I was able to reduce the size of the dead zone. Mostly moving the lse just fuzzed up the cut off line at the dead zone. I did crank the lights downward a bit, and no one flashed me. But I have to say that overall, the light gain, although appreciable, does not eliminate the dead zone or make the high beam anywhere near as bright as the low beam.

So the Jestal Mod in my opinion is a success, but still quite limited. Subjectively, the high beams are still not on par with Halogens. If you have these HIDs and plan on using them in a conventional manner, this mod is so easy, I would recommend you do it.

Back to the drawing board.... Warchild?

 

[jestal]

rocket....I'm working on an amendment to the mod and wanted to see what you think.

I have "windowed" the entire length of the shutter activation channel just leaving two small connector sections so the backside of my channel now looks like a ladder...almost all open. With the bulb reversed and the channel almost completely open there is even more light in the high beam.

The thing I am working on is to shield the extra windows so the LO beam still works as designed. It has to be completely shielded for the LO beam cutoff to work right.

The end window, the first one opened up and the one in your photos is still shielded by the little tab so it is fine.

The other two windows would be shielded in my mod by extending the ends of the shutters. If you look at the shutters when they come together in the LO beam position they leave a gap in the middle of about 2mm. That 2mm is shielded by the shutter activation channel. If the shutters were extended so that they overlapped or touched they would shield the extra windows in the channel and detract very little from the low beam operation as the extension would only clip the LO beam cutoff by a little more.

I polished the shutters with the dremel and soldered two small brass extensions to them and it worked fine....but the solder I used melted after the lights heated up and activating the shutters flung them off...along with a bit of molten solder I am still trying to pick out of my arm...LOL.

I have some higher temp solder I am going to try but looking for any other ideas on how to attach the small 2 mm extensions to the mating edges of the shutters. I haven't figured anything out yet other than the higher temp solder and that doesn't really satisfy me. Any ideas??

This seems to me to be about the limit of what we can do with this setup as it opens up the bulb to the HIGH beam reflector about as much as possible. Plus you can adjust the location of the bulb regardless of the windows in the channel as it is almost completely open now.

 

[FJRocket]

Single Shutter High Beam Mod

I didn't ladder the channel as Jestal suggested. I went ahead and dremelled it out fore and aft as far as I thought that I could get away with. I Also took my dremmel and cut not only the vertical metal supports where the shutters and the retraction mechanism meet (to left the added shutter extension swigh out), but I also cut THE BASE (and that chintzy reflector) back. I looked at the bixenon mechanism sitting next to a halogen and was surprised at how HUGE the bixenon base is and how little the high beam can be seen by the reflector. The base blocks a bunch of light going to the reflector.

So I cut the channel back to as close to the two tabs that pull and retract it, and used that location for eyeballing the cut job on the base. I cut through that reflector quite a lot, too. That thing is throwing the light out, not back at the reflector. I thought the reflector should get as much light as possible, so I hacked most of that reflector out of the way.

I removed the clip on the pop can shroud from the Jestal mod and threw that away. I cut a small piece of pop can to JB weld on top of one of the shutters (it HAS to go on the top!). I trimmed the piece to sit back against the retraction device, forward far enough to cover the channel at the front (but not interfere with the "swing" mechanism), and I had the shutter extension overlap the shutter on the other side a mm or so. I rounded the aft inside corner so it would clear the retraction device. So instead of trying to make TWO shutters mate perfectly, I just made one that pretty much covers the entire open area.

I have a few pictures of the mod. My host shit the bed and they are restoring their servers. Soon as my webspace is up and running again, I'll insert some pics.

I think this mod is even easier than Jestals. Although there is quite a bit of dremeling, really all you have to do is glue one small flat piece on, and it goes on pretty easily.

This is what I had in mind the first time around when I intended to hack these lights. I think a combination of Jestal's ideas, Warchild's and mine will let some more high beam out. Probably NOTHING as good as Warchild's dedicated high beam farkle, but maybe good enough for some of us. The JB should harden by dark, then I'll take it for a spin. More news later... please stand by!

 

[Just Plain Dave]

Thanks a lot guys. I was overjoyed with the headlight performance on my 05 FJR. It is better than any previous bike I've owned, and it seems to me it is brighter and lights the road better than my pickup does. Now you've convinced me I have a problem. I just have to figure out what it is. :blink:

 

[Caba]

Thanks a lot guys. I was overjoyed with the headlight performance on my 05 FJR. It is better than any previous bike I've owned, and it seems to me it is brighter and lights the road better than my pickup does. Now you've convinced me I have a problem. I just have to figure out what it is. :blink:

Ahh Yes,

Kinda like the concept of "enough" money is "enough" light infront of the bike!

As soon as the AUX lights arrive I will Hack up my kit and install it all. (background sound track of maniacal laugh) :butcher:

It would be interesting to set up some HID "FOG" beams as lows and pull the end caps off the HID HR bulbs as brights. B)

 

[RadioHowie]

I'm not getting any images from jestal's posts, which make viewing his pictorial somewhat difficult.

Can't get to www.docthrock.com either. Maybe we've blown all his bandwidth for the month.

Anyone else not able to view the "jestal mod" pictorial?