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Photo by Marc Gibaud, Clouds on Tres Cerros and Mount Fitzroy, Argentinian Patagonia

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Photo by Marc Gibaud,
Clouds on Tres Cerros and
Mount Fitzroy, Argentinian Patagonia



 
 
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Old 7 Jul 2008
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Join Date: Jun 2008
Location: NSW, Australia
Posts: 62
KLE 500 - HID Installation

G'day all,

I thought I would share a little project I undertook on the weekend to add a new farkle to my '06 KLE. The motivation for this project stems from a couple of near misses (and a 65kmh impact!) with kangaroo's whilst riding the scooter home in the early evening.

My understanding of HID light setups was/is that these are expensive and used by anyone doing a fair amount of driving/riding/racing after dark.


The KLE has a twin light installation, with each lamp operating independently to provide low and high beam operation, so a basic car kit should suffice. Upon doing some homework, I discovered that kits come in a number of variations, such as globe type and rating, colour range and ballast size.





A check of the bike species and a visual inspection highllighted some considerations for the installation.

1. The globes are H7 style
2. A rating of 35W for the HID lights exceeds the output of 55W halogens whilst reducing the total draw on the electrical system
3. Only the ultraslim ballasts can be fitted due to space limitations

Given the limited power available and space to fit ballasts and the associated wiring, I decided that a car kit with H7 globes rated at 4300K colour (evidently the best for seeing things at night, and the “whitest” light) and ultra-slim ballasts would be the ticket.

After hunting around the local stores and the net, I found an excellent deal on fleabay - $AU158 delivered. Although the kit had to be sent from Hong Kong, it was on my doorstep within 5 days of ordering!

Here is the kit as supplied.




First job was to compare the position of the light sources in each. HID relies on an electrical arc through xenon gas, as opposed to the conventional glowing wire in the old globes. The position of the light source relative to the reflector is critical to the efficiency of the lamp.



Fortunately, everything was spot on!

Next job was to fabricate a mount for the ballasts. Thankfully, the underside of the instrument cluster is the perfect spot, so a plate was made up to fit the three existing instrument panel mounting bolts, and the ballasts were fixed to that using small nuts and bolts.





This photo shows just how thin these ballasts are.


The wiring is basically plug and play, with male terminals placed directly into the existing light sockets, with a little care to make sure that the correct ballast is connected to the respective high and low beam lights.


A quick comparison before and after



Low beam before



Low beam after



High beam before



High beam after

The only downside is the warm up period when switching between high and low beams, The first second or so after switching beams, the light is reduced in power and quite blue. Visibility is still ok, just takes a little getting used to – but the trade off in light performance is well worth it!
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