Bulbs and fuses

[Engineer]

The common sense angle about carrying spare bulbs is... if your lights use bulbs then carry some spares, otherwise don't - if your lights are LED then you don't need to carry anything.

The point is that bulbs are known relatively short finite life and are normally user replaceable, so it makes sense to carry spares.

LEDs theoretically have a very long life and are not user serviceable so carrying spares makes no sense - the downside is that if they do fail at night then you will need to be recovered, which will be an adventure if you are in the middle of nowhere in a foreign country.

Bulbs may be un-sexy old technology but they make more sense on an 'adventure bike.

 

[JohnnyBoxer]

In over 20 years of touring in Europe and further afield I have never carried bulbs (my reasoning is that with all the vibes in a topbox, the filaments would be bust anyway)

Never had a bulb go ...until last Sept in the Black Forest when a headlight bulb went

No drama, garage in a small village had a spare bulb for about 5e and Micky had a spare fuse

So all was ok and I would do the same this year (just have a few fuses, because the 1150 ones seem a bit smaller than normal ones)

In fact if I couldn't find a bulb I would have carried on with only the sidelight as normally I used to prefer riding without lights ( I did yesterday as the XR has lights that you can turn off by choice) & then some EEC bod said all bikes must have mandatory lights

 

[Beemerman59]

So for those that have the LED Headlamp option, is the LED cluster replaceable (in a similar fasion to a bulb) or is the whole headlight assembly sealed?

 

[JohnnyBoxer]

So for those that have the LED Headlamp option, is the LED cluster replaceable (in a similar fasion to a bulb) or is the whole headlight assembly sealed?

Probably, knowing BMW

EDIT - just had a look at the parts fiche and the normal headlight has H7 bulbs, whereas the diagram for tthe LED Headlight, just comes as one complete unit and looks sealed for life

 

[Deleted account 240901001]

You can't be "done" for not carrying spare bulbs "En France"...they can..and will...do you for having a bulb out and not having the wherewithall to fix it on the spot.....

 

[iandavid]

Maybe you can't but I was not in a very strong position to argue!