HID Headlights

[PaulSmith]

Your being a tad simplistic, if it was that simple then we would all be running them.

It is that simple! And now that bloody things are even cheaper then regular bulbs you have no excuse NOT to use them!
The fact remains they provide three times more light for one third less power. They are, IMHO, the single best safety improvement I have ever made to any bike. That is why I am trying to encourage more people to run them and decide for themselves. If they don't like them, they will be out of pocket less then a tenner!

So lets take at the HID bulb in the picture, which is just like all telescopic H4 HID kits available - [Which is why I used it.]

• did you measure to the center of the arc, from the base of the H4 plate? as most will be out a few mm, but can the same be said for Hi beam?
  
• is there lateral free-play in yours (as in vertical movement where gravity will be pulling the bulb mech downward, mean it out of alignment). And because the bulb is flapping about while the bike is moving you get additional dazzling of other road users.
  
• all telescopic hid kits that I have seen have two shrouds/baffles, an inner and outer. The position of the inner is almost always inaccurate and either allows some spillage on dip and/or obscured on Hi.
  
• The hole in the outer baffle (again on all kits I have seen) dosent allow enough light out so you don't get all the light being exposed to the reflector. [Do you get enough? I do]
  
• And the solenoid mech used in all kits I have seen is very cheap and chearfull to the point that when Hi beam has been on for a while the whole back of the bulb overheats, because its essentially just shy of being a short circuit.
  
• A lot of the telescopic kits are so poorly manufactured that the bulbs dosent stayed screwed into the baseplate assy and/or arent sealed so water/condensation can ingress into the headlight unit.
  
• And keeping on the subject of cheap and cheerful, most of these kits don't last anywhere near as long as stated, either the bloody bulbs or the ballasts go.
  

I went to the hassle of finding the H4 bulb specification, finding a H4-3 HID bulb, finding a vernier caliper and adjusting it correctly, taking the photo and posting it and you couldn't be even be bothered to look at it?  What is your problem? Tell you what, I am bored now, here is the spec for a H4. When you post evidence of a problem, I will listen to you, but until then...

[smg id=2651 type=preview align=center caption="H4 bulb spec"]

There are direct LED replacement H4 bulbs out there, but this example is tad too pricey - http://www.horizonleds.co.uk/cree-led-he...dlight-kit

So bloody what? LED lamps are area source not point source so can not be used effectively in point source based reflectors to produce directed light. Do you know nothing?