HID fogs...

[Ed Miller]

I love it.  My R65, which came stock with H4 headlights, was converted to the Windjammer light which uses a 7" sealed beam halogen bulb.  But I can convert that back to an H4, so that I can convert that to an HID.

Will these poor bikes ever forgive us?  The nice thing is I can do a much better job of wiring than the person who installed the Windjammer on my R65.  That mess of wiring and stupid blue splice connectors is embarrassing, except nobody can see it.

For what it's worth, my Triumph came stock with a pitiful incandescent light bulb, which I converted to H4 rather quickly.  You can't have enough light!  Or is it just my aging eyes?

[Justin B.]

Ed, I think we're forgiven as long as we don't hang a sissy-bar off the bac, horns to the forks, and glue fur to the tank - may that cretin rot in motorcycle hell!!!

I have seen several folks post that their Windjammer used a standard sealed beam headlight.  I'm about 99.99% sure that the Windjammer SS that came dealer installed on the 1978 R100/7 I bought new had the stock headlight installed into the fairing.  Maybe some dealers put in the cheap bulb, kept, and then re-sold the original BMW light to further "enhance" their profit margin?

I am on the verge of ordering one of the HID conversion kits but after doing much research and reading there is one camp that strongly argues that the light output from an unmodified reflector system is crap, glares like hell, and is actually worse than an H4.  The other camp says that is correct unless you shim/space the HID bulb to the "sweet-spot".  This makes a lot of sense to me as I remember buying a replacement Mag Light Krypton bulb for my 4-cell Mag Light years ago and it came with a pack of "shims" so the bulb position could be "tweaked".

[thrang]

Mmmmm:) Now they look intresting as the headlamp in the RT fairing on Bimbo2 is not up to much...
Wonder if there is a euro suppiler?

[Ed Miller]

I have seen several folks post that their Windjammer used a standard sealed beam headlight.  I'm about 99.99% sure that the Windjammer SS that came dealer installed on the 1978 R100/7 I bought new had the stock headlight installed into the fairing.  Maybe some dealers put in the cheap bulb, kept, and then re-sold the original BMW light to further "enhance" their profit margin?

I am on the verge of ordering one of the HID conversion kits but after doing much research and reading there is one camp that strongly argues that the light output from an unmodified reflector system is crap, glares like hell, and is actually worse than an H4.  The other camp says that is correct unless you shim/space the HID bulb to the "sweet-spot".  This makes a lot of sense to me as I remember buying a replacement Mag Light Krypton bulb for my 4-cell Mag Light years ago and it came with a pack of "shims" so the bulb position could be "tweaked".

Here are the SS mounting instructions, they used the sealed beam:

http://tinyurl.com/2jhvwx

I think previous versions did use the stock headlight.

I've read Sturn's pages about HIDs, and Joe 'Cuda was big on poo-pooing HID conversions, but I think the ones I put in for the low beams in my car worked well.  I don't think we need expensive test equipment to see if we like the HIDs better.

[Justin B.]

Strange, I had a '78 'Jammer SS.  I would bet one might find that the bmw headlight assembly might fit in place of a sealed-beam.  That was actually one of BMW's selling points back then, I remember 'most everybody being in agreement that Beemers had about the best headlight (for a sickle) in the business.

I think I'm leaning toward telling Sandy-Claws to bring me an HID Bi-Xenon kit...