HID conversion on an Airhead

[UberXY]

I bought a HID hi/lo H4 conversion kit from xtremehids.com recently. I looked at a number of sites before doing this; they all were selling roughly the same stuff at the same price, so I just picked a site with an American address that took PayPal.

 

The kit arrives with what appears to be a lot of wires and no instructions. I called and emailed xtreme but no response. However, if you just look at the kit and its plugs, it's really straightforward and you do not need instructions. The relay on it is set up to control two ballasts and two headlights; however, since we are dealing with a single headlight, only one ballast is included, which means there is a deceivingly significant wire left over unused.

 

I assembled the kit on the bench in about a minute and tested it with a twelve volt source. Lit right up, no problems. Piece of cake, I thought, it's just plug and play.

 

Well, when I went to install it on the bike, it's a bit more than plug and play. Four plugs have to reside in the headlight bucket on my '86 R65. Plenty of room, but the bucket only has two small holes and grommets for wiring, and no way these four plugs would fit thru them. And no way was I gonna drill big holes in the bucket.

 

So I cut the seven wires associated with the plugs, and put the plugs in from the front of the bucket, and then poked their cut wire ends thru the existing grommets. I then spliced in some extensions on the protruding wires and reconnected them with the other ends of the cut wires. No biggie, a little time consuming, a little PITA on some of the very small diameter wires, and I covered every solder joint with heat shrink tubing. (Watch your polarity when doing this). I put the ballast securely under the bottom of the lower triple clamp. There was enough wire in the kit to then mount the relay under the seat by the battery. All the wiring was routed under the tank, so its a neat install, and it works great.

 

I highly recommend this upgrade for an airhead. The lighting is way better, and it also draws less current, which is another bonus for the modest charging system on airheads.

 

If the system fails, all the original wiring and plugs are preserved, so popping in your spare conventional H4 bulb would take no more time than changing a dead H4 bulb as if you had never done the conversion. On an R65 it takes a phillips screwdriver and about 2 minutes to change the headlight bulb; on mine it takes a few minutes longer as I have an R90S fairing on the bike.

 

BTW, the search engine for the BMWSP website does not do 3 letter words. If you want to search for "HID" do it in a google site specific like this (no spaces in the url):

 

hid site:http://bmwsporttouring.com/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php?ubb=postlist&Board=16&page=1