Installation
Fitting to Motorcycles
When fitting to bikes, do it in 3 separate steps
(1) Remove the headlight unit and do the fiddling around with the burners that way. Trying to fit the new burners without removing the headlight unit is a recipe for frustration swearing and skinned knuckles – and therefore misery. You will also need a 23-25 mm (1 inch) drill bit (you need to make a circular hole on the back of the headlight units two round caps.)
(2) Find where you want to locate the ballasts, and mount them – make sure they are close enough to the headlights for the cables to reach – it’s near impossible to extend them. I have my 1200 GSA headlight ballasts between the screen and the back of the instrument panel. Others have chosen different locations. There is no best answer. But do note that if you mount under the oil cooler on a GS or GSA, the forks “move forward” under compression, so the ballasts can not project further back than that rear edge of the oil cooler. Some end up getting custom brackets made up for the ballasts, while my preferred option now that we have moved exclusively on to ultra-thin ballasts, is just to mount them with 3M VHB (Very High Bond) double sided tape or 3M VHB Dual Lock industrial velcro. Everyone seems to find different locations to mount the ballasts. You have to be creative with motorbikes re ballasts mounting. There is always room though, I have 6 ballasts on my 1200 GSA … you just have to find the room.
(3) Connect everything up. And power up !
Note that sometimes the kits come with slightly different wires that are nominated in the installation booklets. The booklets refer to red being positive and black negative. Usually that’s the case with the kits but occasionally I get kits with blue and black wires. In those examples, the black wire remains negative, and the blue wire is positive.
Here it is again in a bit more detail:
HID Conversion Kit Installation, for BMW motorcycles.
1. Remove Headlight unit from motorcycle, ensuring motorcycle is switched off. No need to remove battery.
2. Unscrew the plastic caps at the back of the housing that provide access to the bulbs.
3. In the centre of the two plastic caps that were removed earlier, drill a 23-25 mm (1 inch) hole (with a hole saw bit or a flat wood bit).
4. Unlatch the bulb retaining spring clip, and remove the old halogen bulbs. The plastic that holds the spring clips is brittle and prone to break. Be careful.
5. Pass the bulb and two wires with open spade connectors through the newly drilled out hole in each plastic cap until the rubber grommet is seated in the newly drilled hole.
6. Insert new HID bulbs, ensuring they are correctly aligned. Note that the 4 wires will slide back and forwards through the grommet. I advise that when you are fiddling around getting the bulb in, that you pull as much wire to the bulb side of the grommet as possible to avoid skinned knuckles and excess frustration. When seating the new bulbs, the H1 is hard to get wrong, but the H7 is easily gotten wrong. Make sure the bulbs are correctly seated before closing the bulb retaining spring clip, again taking care not to damage the poorly made housing around the base of the spring clip.
7. Connect the spade connectors up to the motorcycle’s headlight power. (see 8 and 9 below for H7 and H1 respectively)
8. The spade connectors attach to the contact block that previously plugged into the back of the bulb. On a H7 kit, the brown BMW wire (negative) needs to lead to the black spade connector wire (negative). And the white or yellow BMW wire (positive) needs to connect to the blue or red spade connector wire (positive).
9. On a H1 kit, the BMW earth is plugged to the headlight housing and needs to be removed before connecting to the black spade connector. They may need to be crimped together with a pair of pliers if they are different shapes. The wire that connected to the H1 bulb is the positive and needs to be connected to the blue or red wire’s spade connector.
10. Plug the wires that come from the bulb into ballasts with the “its impossible to plug in the wrong way” connectors and check the HIDs have been wired up correctly by turning the appropriate lights on. Note both ballasts in the kit are identical, so you do not need to pair a particular ballast with a particular bulb.
11. Close up the headlight unit by screwing back in the plastic caps. Note that the 4 wires will slide back and forwards through the grommet. It is advisable to pull out excess wire from the headlight housing as you close the unit, to avoid having too much crowded wiring inside the cramped headlight housing. Similarly, I advise that when you are fiddling around getting the bulb in, that you pull as much wire to the bulb side of the grommet as possible to avoid skinned knuckles and excess frustration.
12. Next stage … mounting the ballasts. It’s really up to each individual to mount ballasts and a number of different brackets and locations are possible. Make sure the ballasts are mounted so that their cables can comfortably reach the appropriate bulbs. The ultrathin kits are can be screwed or otherwise attached to a flat clean surface. Increasingly, my mounting of choice is to use 3M double sided tape or Dual Lock industrial Velcro. See below for more info on industrial Velcro, and note the first 3 pictures have UltraThin HID ballasts attached with Dual Lock industrial Velcro.
Note: BMW’s have unique wire colours.
White wire : high beam positive
Yellow wire : low beam positive
Brown wires : earth (negative)
HID Conversion Kit Installation, for KTM 950/990 Adventure motorcycles.
See the excellent link below from Tim Youngblood. Tim refers to converting a US KTM Adventure. The US big adventure models come from the factory with an appalling H4 bulb based headlight unit and the only real option for someone looking to get proper headlight performance from a US KTM is to first buy the “Euro spec” headlight unit for around $190. Our KTM kits are designed for the KTM’s with ECE spec headlight units. These take H3 and H7 bulbs. Read on:
http://www.ktm950.info/how/Farkels/adventure/HID/hid_conv.html
Note: HID’s tend to take a few hours after first use to really get the power, light levels and light
colour at full power and stable colour, so use them liberally initially to bed them down – up to the
first 2-3 months you may find the brightness of the lights increases.
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Ballast location examples
In the above two photos, the four fog and driving light ballasts (two Ultra35s and two Ultra50s) are attached to a custom plate using 3M’s Dual Lock industrial Velcro, which I can supply (see below)
In the photo above, the two headlight ballasts are attached to the top of the headlight unit using nothing but small patches of Dual Lock
The photo above shows space inside the steering well where even a larger ballast can be mounted on each side of the 1200 GS / GSA bike
And HID50 on a K1200R:
HID50 on a KTM 990 Adventure, and on a Triumph Tiger
HID50 on the BMW F800GS (low beam / high beam)
Brackets
There are our custom made ballast mounting brackets available for the BMW 1200 GS and GSA.
Above: The 1200GS bracket. Its versatility is that it was be able to handle any ballasts, large or small. This is useful if you ever need to change to a different style of ballast at a future date. Its upgrade friendly. You can fit up to 4 of the new UltraThin ballasts side by side on our bracket – ideal for doing the foglights as well.
Pics above: The HID50 bracket fitted with UltraThin 50w ballasts
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Dual Lock
All HID50 ballasts are flat on the back and can be securely mounted with the likes of 3M “Dual Lock” tape.
(see http://www.demon-tweeks.co.uk/products/ProductDetail.asp?cls=MCYCLE&pcode=AEH355D for availability).
The brackets that come with the Finned kits are simple to mount , but in small spaces they can restrict
flexibility. In tight spaces, the Dual Lock mounting may afford more mounting options.
The top three pictures above are my own bike and the 6 ballasts are all mounted with Dual Lock industrial velcro.
The top two pictures have 4 ultrathin ballasts mounted under the beak of the bike on a stainless steel plate.
The third picture shows two more ultrathin ballasts, mounted with dual lock to the top of headlight unit,
between the screen and the clocks.
STOP PRESS: If you don’t want to order the dual lock tape and incur separate postage
from the shop link above (its around £10 for the Dual Lock plus the postage from that link), then we can now include Dual Lock
in the HID order for an additional £5.
Fitting
If you don’t fancy fitting your own HID set, we can put you in touch with people who can fit your HIDs to your headlights.
Finally: Note that we do not claim to be legal experts and can give no advice as to the legality of operating any HID conversion (35 watt or 50 watt) or any other lighting modification due to the widely varying road regulations in different regions and countries. Anyone who does claim to be able to give you any definitive answer is talking through his/her hat. As with any aftermarket accessory, its up to the buyer to determine how he uses the HID kit. For the record, we sell HIDs for off road and farm use, underwater lighting, photographic and film lighting.
Note: Some headlight reflectors designed for halogen bulbs do not react well to the HID light and occasionally after prolonged use, some marking of the reflectors may occur. Fitment of HID conversions and any associated after-effects are solely the responsibility of the buyer.