brighter lights

  • Thread starter Thread starter Nye
  • Start date Start date

Nye

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Can anyone advise on an upgrade to the lighting? It's a 2004 F650GS. I have a 120 mile round trip to work - mostly through countryside and I'm finding the standard headlight less than adequate. It's not so much a tweak I want, more the "night into day" sort of approach. Any suggestions?
 
i had a similar problem when i picked up my Dakar, so i replaced the bulb with a PIAA one. It cost about £25, but it made all the difference!

:beerjug:
 
Is it easy enough to remove the lens and install a new bulb? any issues re heat?
 
yup, just the one. i replaced the side light too, coz it looked poo with the white headlight!
 
Apart from several missing pieces of skin on my hand, the bulb is fitted. Well worth it.
 
Ordered from the Nippy Normans link (thanks). Arrrived two days later... and just 5mins to fit. Makes a HUGE difference. The blue tinge seems to make a difference filtering!
Thanks to all for your comments.
 
Trevor George said:
.
I put a 130/90 watt bulb into mine and that made a HUGE difference. I got it at a local Car Rallying Shop. Halfords didn't stock them. Motorworks at http://www.motorworks.co.ukwww.motorworks.co.uk do them.

Cheers, Trevor, Bristol. UK. www.F650.co.uk
.
Click to expand...

UR asking for trouble increasing the wattage, the earth wire is simply not large enough to cope with the extra load that UR now asking it to carry!

Ask the guy whose bike I did a couple of weeks ago, the last owner had also fitted a higher wattage bulb, the earth terminal on the rear of the bulb connector had got that hot that it had nearly melted the whole connector.

Plus.......the earth cable was that brittle for about 50mm from the connector, due to the increased load, that it was ready to fatigue at any moment.

Not a very good scenario really...........maybe havin ALL your lights fail !!!

The ONLY safe way to do it is to increase the size or run another earth wire to carry the increased load.

You have been warned!!!

BTBR
 
Well. There you go. Follow the advice from the forum, spend some cash... only to find it isnt such a good idea after all. So I'm back to the orignal lighting and £14 down then?
 
Keep that bulb in place - if you got the one on the Nippy Normans link your money is well spent!

The Phillips GT150 is 55W and is a direct replacement. Trevors bulb (90W) is the subject of bigtrailbikerider's post
 
bigtrailbikerider .... said:
The last owner had also fitted a higher wattage bulb, the earth terminal on the rear of the bulb connector had got that hot that it had nearly melted the whole connector. Plus.......the earth cable was that brittle for about 50mm from the connector.
Click to expand...
It's likely that when he originally changed the bulb he didn't make a very good connection with the "plug" onto the bulb, so that would have caused a "hot-spot" at the connector, which in turn would have made the wiring adjacent to it brittle. :(

I had mine like it for two years and did a lot of night-riding, and the wiring never got warm, as I frequently checked it "just-in-case".

I always spray a little bit of contact cleaner, then a little dab of grease, when I'm making connections like that, so that's maybe why mine was ok and his wasn't.

Don't let one instance of failure put you off. There's literally hundreds of F650GS owners around the world using the 130/90 watt bulb quite happily. :)
 
Thanks for the replies. For me, the REAL benefit (ie being able to see where I'm going) outweighs the POSSIBLE failure. I'll leave it in and see what happens.
 
I know this may seem a daft point, but have you tried adjusting your headlamp beam out of the gods ?

I have a Mar 04 GS, and found that the lamp was not exactly inspiring, what I did notice was that the beam was trying to light up too much of the road, it was great if I wanted to see the tree tops and the top most point of the road signs but crap at showing me where I was going when there was anyone else on the road with their lights on.

It will be trial and error, but try bringing the beam adjuster down, it you are lighting up an area above the boot line of the car in front it is still too high

Animo
Tulip Twinspark
 
Thanks for the reply.
I put the brighter bulb in and thought tat was going to be better...lasted a bit then problem returned. Silly, I know, but the problem seems to be that the headlight (more than on any other bike I've had) seems to collect road dirt and so doesnt work as well. On a typical commute home from work (65 miles) I have to stop twice to clean the headlight if the weather is bad. So why is that it doesnt happen when I'm in the car?
Ah well, brighter nights means fewer stops for the next few months :-)
 
Nippy Normans supply Touratech, Wunderlich, Desert Fox and many other makes of accessories.
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