Santa brought me more light....

[Flyinfool]

Well this should be interesting.

Santa brought me a set of 35W, H3, HID lights.

Funny coincidence, My bike has a set of 55W Halogen lights with H3 bulbs.

 

Now I can only wonder what would happen if those cute little HID bulbs were to accidentally fall into the fog light housings...........?

 

I already have a HID H4 in the headlight and that one headlight puts out more light than the 4 halogen lights on the front of my P/U truck.

 

The fogs that I have are a clear lens and are designed to shoot a major portion of their light to light up the ditches so that I can spot deer as soon as possible. This will be an interesting conversion for sure.

 

Now IF I can just get back to being ambulatory so I can get out to the bike to start messing with this....................

[Prairiehammer]

I have a set of chrome fog lights on my bike that have 55 watt H3 bulbs. I want to reduce the wattage/electrical load, without sacrificing light output.

 

Been looking for a drop-in bulb in either HID or LED. I have seen many advertised, but I am leery about the focal point matching up with the existing halogen, especially when considering the LED "H3" replacements.

 

Let us know how these work out for you AND what brand and model number if they do work well.

 

Where are you going to put the ballasts?

Edited December 26, 2015 by Prairiehammer

[Flyinfool]

I have no idea where I will stuff the ballasts, a lot will depend on just how long the wires are. My first guess is that one will go in each side of the fairing. There is plenty of room for stuff in there. If the wires are long enough I would like to put both ballasts in the right fairing just to keep that high voltage (23,000V) farther away from my stereo and ignition box that are both in the left fairing.

[cowpuc]

Sounds like an AWESOME addition to the scoot Fool!! I also like the idea of you tinkering with those lights instead of other things you could be tinkering with - that Santa,, he is just a win-win kinda varmint I guess!!

[Flyinfool]

Yes @cowpuc this will keep me occupied for a while. BUT I so love the melodious sound of the Snowpercharger whirring in the background wile I work on the scoot..........

 

The biggest issue that I see at first look is that the power wire of a halogen H3 comes out to the side where these wires come straight out the back of the bulb and the back of the bulb is a LOT longer than a stock H3.

Just looking at it it appears that the light producing element is pretty close to the same location in both bulbs. Based on this I am optimistic about the beam pattern that I will get.

 

The big issue will be that the back of the bulb will not fit into the housings that I have without modification. Fortunately I have the technology to make modifications to the housing.

 

The plan is to cut a 1 inch hole in the back of the housing.

Then I will turn a hollow plastic cap to fit into that hole and be deep enough to clear the back of the bulb.

Then glue or plastic weld the new cap to the housing. Perhaps a splash of paint to make it purdy.

 

The high voltage wires that go from the ballast to the bulb are only about 16 inches, with a connector in the middle. So it looks like one ballast in each side of the fairing.

 

Sorry no pics yet but due to my foot I am only doing armchair engineering at this point.

 

But there will eventually be more to come.