Hi All , What is your main beam like ? Dip seems very good e.g. Light pattern ect . Main beam seems just to be a load of light with no particular beam of light , the light just seems to spread out (if that makes sense ) I wonder if the bulb is incorrect .
You don't want a HID in a full beam unit as they take 20 seconds or so to warm up fully. LED is the way to go or a good quality filament bulb. Old Rider, want do you want to know? A link or how well it works? It works great, almost as bright as my HID dipped beam. I'll find a link.
HID takes about 2 seconds to warm to full brightness these days. There are no LED bulbs bright enough to be used in a standard headlight. A proper LED designed headlight unit uses more than one LED bulb in it, look at any Audi or 1299 Panigale. Modern HID kits with slim and very quick ballasts are available from ebay China for less than £10. If you don't trust the reliability then buy 2 and keep one on the shelf. The wife's ST2 has been running one for about 2 years now and my 848 for a year with no problems at all.
The LED I linked is really very bright Bob. It more than does the job in my high beam projector. Cheap HID kits are rubbish compared to a kit from HIDS4U for example. Cheap kits are usually better than a filament though, I have tested LOADS.
Hi all just tried the hid lamp (it's dark now) listed as Ducati 749 999 Xenon HID HB3 Headlamp Conversion from ninjazx9rblue on ebay 47.99 Very bright with a better spread than before. Gets to full brightness in about 2-3 seconds.
So are you saying that there is a factory in the UK making HID kits that are the same as those that are made in China at 10 times the price and that they are better quality? The ones fitted to my bikes and my car, are top quality as I have had no problems with any of them. Are you also saying that a headlight that is designed for a halogen filament bulb works fine with an LED bulb from China - something that no vehicle manufacturer does? Sound like a bit of contradiction there to me.
Old Rider, only because I had already fitted HID to the llw beam that I was happy with. Bob, not a contradiction, HIDS4U have some quality control in place obviously, you may just have got lucky with your HID. Many of the cheap kits are dog shite. A projector type housing as opposed to reflector housing can use any source of light as the positioning of the source is not crucial. In a reflector housing the positioning of the filament is crucial and HID and LED therefore do not work very well. You are probably familiar with H4 HID bulbs that have the huge cover over the light source in an attempt to make a nice beam pattern.
Perhaps, but 6 of the cheapest kits that I could find on ebay are working great (the ones in my car have been for over 3 years now) so my stats would say that none of the kits were shite. All of mine are fitted to projectors. All vehicle manufacturers who fit HID have them in projectors for a good reason. As I said before no vehicle manufacturer fits LEDs into projectors, to my knowledge, and there must be a reason for that. I would love to see a scientific test of the lumen output from the LED bulbs that are coming out of China because i don't believe the claims they are making.
Its inside my high beam only so no worries as far as beam pattern cut off goes. The bulb linked above works great.
@bluey, if you click on the wordpress link at the bottom of Bob's posts, you will see that he has carried out a lot of experimentation and work on LEDs, headlights and and HID. Have a read, I find his blogs fascinating. If you've also experimented a lot, your combined knowledge should be invaluable. OR
