HID H4 headlight HI/LO operation

[FJRocket]

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?

Radio, my host croaked. It's still down, so my website, email and EVERYTHING related to that is still offline. The jestal mod pictorial is mine. If you can't see my GUNFIGHTER avatar, my website is offline.

Sucks not having email, especially. I have Verizon.net mail, but no "docthrock" mail, which is where I have everything. I can't believe it's taking them nearly a full day to get a server replaced and restored. So much for the 99.5% uptime guarantee.

BTW, I've never used more than 3% of my 100gig bandwidth on my website. Talk about room to spare! Doesn't help, though, if the servers don't work at all.

I went out and test rode my hacked Bixenons. The high beam color is not all funky like it was before. The dead zone is now just a darker area that is fuzzed out. And there IS more light down the road.

As SkooterG would say, now I need to compare it to another bike with halogens to get an idea of how much high beam there actually is qualitatively and quantitatively (although probably still somewat subjectively). It's possible that my high beam is comparable to standard high beams but that the low beams are still so intense that the high beams just don't look nearly as good. The high beams may be "acceptible", but I still don't think they are as good as Silver Star or other performance halogens, but it is hard to tell without side by side comparison.

The low beam is still overpoweringly fantastic, but the high beam is probably no where near as good as Warchild's "dedicated high beam mod" discussed in his other thread.

I want to try to stick with a more traditional pair of lights, not a single low beam. The HID's are now "live-able" to me, but no where near my original expectations. Remember, this is with just hacking the RIGHT high beam base and shutter (although the left side has the "Jestal mod"). If I hack the other light's shutter, I may REALLY have something decent.

BTW, on this light I DID move the light source ALL THE WAY BACK to the famed ~6mm position in the base housing. I previously removed the circlip as Jestal (and WC) suggested, cut a NEW slot about 2-3 mm forward of the exisiting series of slots and re-clipped the light source back in "the high beam position".

So at this point I have a left side headlight with a stock (low beam) light source (filament/element) position but it does have the "jestal Mod". The right headlight has the "single shutter high beam mod" with the light source moved back to the "high beam filament position" and the channel slotted and the base ( and chintzy reflector) cut back to let out as much light as possible to the FJR's lens/reflector.

Now I seem to be getting somewhere!

 

[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?

Radio, my host croaked. It's still down, so my website, email and EVERYTHING related to that is still offline. The jestal mod pictorial is mine. If you can't see my GUNFIGHTER avatar, my website is offline.

Dude...thanks for the clarification. Yep, yer avatar is gone, as is everything else as of 8:30am EST.

You must be hosting on RoadRunner.

 

[FJRocket]

Bixenon Single Shutter Mod

The pic below shows the lower (right side) shutter with a piece of pop can aluminum epoxied to place:

The next pic shows (fuzzily) the side support cut off. That piece is a vertical extension that comes off of the nose cone strut. The vertical piece provides extra support at the location where the shutter end bumps up against the retraction mechanism fingers. The stop isn't that necessary. Just try not to cut cut anything else!

The next fuzzy picture shows how much I cut the base. It also shows how much channel I hacked out to let the source light through the bottom of the mechanism.

And below is a pic of the mechanism opened in the high beam mode. Now you get a better idea of the size of the shutter extension. If I were to do this again, I probably would NOT cut off the corner of the extension at the inside forward corner. That was a matter of choice. It's going to block light somewhere no matter what, but if you leave that corner in tact, you get less high beam light sneaking out when low beam is selected.

Again, I don't think this is going to give you as much light as Warchild's dedicated high beam mod, but it is a nice compromise for those who wish to have the standard two headlights usable. This mod does reduce the dead zone (does not completely eliminate it) and it does throw more high beam down the road. If you already own these bixenons and want two lights burning all the time without extra driving lights, this might be a good way to go.

 

[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]

Jestal riveted his shutter extension to the big shutter vertical. He doesn't trust JB Weld. The JB may NOT hold up under the intense heat, and he has already lost one extension that he epoxied, so he suggests rivets.

The shutter extension has to be on the top of the horizontal part of the shutter. I epoxied mine to that surface. So my shutter extension is just a flat piece glued on. In order to RIVET the piece in place, you have to make the extension an ANGLE piece, sort of L shaped. If you are going to rivet on a shutter extension, it HAS to be attached to the VERTICAL part of the shutter.

See my other thread. In retrospect, I'd just move the light source to the rearmost position by putting the clip in the forward most slot, invert the light source in the bixenon housing, add the extension and gut the channel and the bottom of the base. THEN call it good. You'll still have a dead zone, but you will have decent high beam light. If you staggar the beams, you can effectively reduce the dead zone.

I'm still looking for a better way to attach the shutter extension. I don't have confidence that my JB will hold, but some form of high temp resistance epoxy is probably still the best way to go. YMMV.

 

[Warchild]

I'm also posting this to the other thread.

Let's not have overlapping, concurrent threads; it's too confusing.

Locking this one; focus on the other one....