I always used to reckon you could never have enough brakes on a vehicle, nor enough light on the road. In that spirit, can I ask you for your recommendations for which is the best H4 headlight bulb to throw as much light as possible out there? I don't really want to wander too far from the standard 60/55 (if at all ). This is because I would prefer not to run uprated cables to run something like a 130/100 that I did decades ago... I know bulb technology has moved on a pace since then but I've not kept up with it. I welcome your suggestions and experiences.
Philips 12342XV+S2 H4 X-Treme Vision +130%, Headlight Car Bulbs (Twin-Pack): Amazon.co.uk: Car & Motorbike
The Philips X-Treme Vision is a great standard bulb. Have used them in cars and bikes for quite a few years now. The problem that some Ducatis have in my experience (M1100 SF848) is that the reflector is poor. Putting in a good bulb makes things better, but still crap. I suspect that if you had a bulb of three or four times the brightness of a standard bulb you'd get the sort of light output needed to be able to ride safely at night. That would mean going HID or high output LED.
Changing any halogen H4 for any other halogen H4 is never going to give more than 5% more, or less, light (around 1400 lumens for a 55 watt halogen). The halogen bulb is at the end of its development life and cannot get any better. You can read, and believe, any manufacturers claims, but they are just trying to sell their product. This is the reason the top end cars come with HID zenon headlights these days (around 3000 lumens for a 35 watt).
I would really like to upgrade the low beam and high beam on my 899 also, another bi-product of doing so would be to match the colour more closely with the LED running lights. Currently it's very yellow. What would be the best non-HID bulb to go in there without hoping the wattage or melting lenses etc? I guess from the above the Philips ones are the best halogen? Can u buy a LED bulb to go in there are a direct replacement?
I thought that the 1299 with the same headlight as yours had an LED option. You should be able to get a headlight unit and harness to go LED on the main lamps but I expect it will cost you a fortune.
Yes, the 1199s had full LED units but the wiring is not plug and play, also the dash board is different and the ECU is Mitsubishi on the 899 so requires rework. For my use currently, in getting that the h4 Philips bulbs would be enough
Yes you could buy slightly different colour halogen bulbs, but in theory they will be no brighter. Whatever you do don't buy H4 bulbs because they will not fit as the 899 uses H11.
I chose a new H7 bulb (separate beam and dip filaments) a few years back after reading a review on-line from one of the German magazines - Motorrad I think. Perhaps worth searching around to see if there are similar more recent reviews. Mine was Philips - something like a "Moto-Vision" with a slight amber tint to it - it works well enough, but I agree that the difference a good bulb can make is limited (but never worth buying cheap ones which always seem to fail early).
I switched out my Halogen lamps for aftermarket Xenons on my 848 - went for a lower colour temperature to minimise the chances of Mr Plod noticing they weren't stock. It made a huge difference to night time riding. Not the easiest thing to squeeze in to the bike but I managed to hide the ballasts behind the clocks and tuck all the wiring in neatly in the end. Now I have the 1299S with LEDs and they're even better still!
