Guys -
ok not sure if this has been posted in the past ..
BUT check this out
www.ddmtuning.com
click on "Motorcycle kits" 35w & 55w
c/w
- Digital Slim Ballast
- 1 Hi/Low HID Bulb
- Life-Time Warranty

all for $35.00 !!

 

How about "Stupid HID Kits" or "Unsafe HID Kits" or "Dangerous HID Kits"... Because that is what they are...

As for why, go read up on the effects on putting a HID bulb in a reflector designed for a halogen bulb...

Sorry, no offence meant... But I wouldn't go promoting anything unless i knew what it was...

 

+1

And they dont project as well either!

 

No worries , I had NO idea ! one of my guys that I work with gave me the website .

 

I partially agree as well with Tweety, I have purchased two kits from DDM and have mixed results. I purchased a kit for my wifes car and they are acutally pretty nice. I did not get the 55w set but the 35w set so they aren't horribly blinding for oncoming cars, HOWEVER, the 55w kit I bought for my SH is a bit different. It seems like their kits aren't made for bikes, way too many wires that you can't cut off or you will void your warranty, and it does not seem to have a good... "beam". (not sure if that is proper term but oh well). Price is right, but result is only so so.

 

They will unfortunately blind regardless of wattage... The reflector is made in such a way that with the lightsource in a specific place you get a nice beam with no light scattered outside it... With the light in any other place (which you get with a HID since the whole bulb glows not just a filament) you get small scattered reflections bouncing all over the place... Granted a 35W lowbeam only HID isn't exactly dangerous, probably just annoying, but it's still as strong or stronger than the 55W halogen it replaces with a scattered beam...

A high/low setup will be worse since it has either two bulbs or a solenoid moving a single one making the placement even less precise... More scattered and more powerful light... Go up to a 55W and it gets real nasty...

A reflector made for a HID or even better a projector makes the beam very focused, no stray light, so no blinding, and even more intense... It's night and day in intensitiy to do a HID in a halogen reflector... The difference getting a projector is that magnified again... Do it!

 

i hear, and read, lots of positive comments about the hids, ddm kits in particular. i had a different(cheaper) set in my rc51 and never got one "turn your high beams off" flash from an oncoming driver. i am also under the impression that they hids are designed to place the light source in the same position as halogen with filament, but like tweety said, the hid tube is longer than the filament.

hids light up the night like no halogen could ever dream.

jury is out for me, but i lean more toward positive on the hids.

 

The thing is when working with optics like an reflector, moving the light a fraction of an mm makes a huge difference since it's magnified by the distance to the reflector...

The best way to confirm it is to put your bike in the garage and have the light against a wall... If there is any light whatsoever above the midline on lowbeam it's going to blind... And it would immidiately be failed under the testing rules in Sweden, dunno exactly how your rules work...

Here is an average example of an H4 HID cheapo Kit in a stock halogen reflektor... The highbeam is the way it should be mostly... But the lowbeam should have been a sharp cut off at the middle with no ligth at all above... The smaller halo there is going straight in the face of the oncoming driver... Notice that this is with the headlight aimed as best as possible, ie actually a bit lower than optimal for light output...

 

For reference... My HID with a projector... The lowbeam has no light above the cut off and a much wider and more focused beam... Granted the distance is further in this pic, but the difference is noticable...



My highbeam... Notice the very focused middle beam and the two wings? Those are very nice for seeing the edges of the road...

 

At the risk of pissing Tweety off, I'm jumping into this.
Over the weekend I just installed the DMM 35watt kit that I received for Christmas.
The good:
Amazing quality look. I have no idea what is in the ballast and solenoid, but the case looks great. Also comes with a full set of plug and play cables. Hooks directly to the battery and uses the original H4 conector to trigger the solenoid. Less than $50 shipped there is nothing comes close for "getting what you paid for". I spent $30 on my silverstar. This was $50 for the whole system and a bulb that is easily twice as bright
The Bad
Much of Tweety's objections about extranious reflected light is right. When HID is put into a standard reflector made for a H4 you do not get the traditional HID flat plane of light. It is sort of a cross between that and the old H4 halogen pattern - which was a poor pattern to begin with. I absolutely agree the "right" way to do this conversion is with a projector.
Conclusion
This 35 watt kit is much brighter than my silverstar. I drove it last night (first night) and was amazed to actually see down the road. Should this be done? Does it dazzle other drivers and to what degree? I have not yet been on the receiving end, but it must dazzle a bit. If anyone is interested I'll take pics tonight against my garage. If anything I expect they are even worse than what tweety presented

One final thought - as a starting point to build a correct HID system the DMM seems a good start. I can now cruise ebay for a good projector and keep the DMM wiring.

Until then I guess I am not being as friendly as I could be to oncoming motorists - But lots of riders put in high watt bulbs (also illegal) and ride with the high beams on all the time. In the scheme of things I don't consider myself an "outlaw biker"

 

Heh... If you want to **** me of you have to actually be offensive...

I like discussions as long as people have atleast thought through their arguments...

And agreed a lowbeam only HID in a reflector is somewhat "ok"... The reason I say lowbeam is that it's very much more likely that they got the bulb close to right as long as it's not moving/dual...

But nope... It's not even close to as good of a beam pattern as a halogen, which granted isn't as sharp as a HID in a projector is... It's still very much cleaner than any HID/reflector combo... And with less intensity comes the lesser chance that the stray light will blind...

I actually have a H4 HID bulb somewhere since I helped a friend swap it out for a projector... Someday I'll get around to sticking it in the stock VTR reflector and look at the pattern...

 

id like some pictures of what the light output looks like. also if you could snap a pic if the bulb itself and how it mounts into the h4 houseing. thanks, also a cool pic would be turn your bike on, sit it in the road, get your camera and put it on self timer then sit it on the ground, now take off running

 

Ok... You actually got me curious...

HID projector lowbeam vs VTR reflector with H4 low/high bulb in lowbeam...

I hope to god that your H4 bulb is better than this... I couldn't really tell much difference from the high beam to the lowbeam...

Oh... Please excuse the crappy pics... Onehanded with an iPhone while putting two leads to a battery with the other...

Oh BTW, the HID is fully warmed up in th H4 pic... It's still warming up in the projector one... But then I managed to photograph the back of the projector instead...

 

You won't be impressed - I checked it out last night but did not takes pics. I'll get them tonight. On the low beam there is an artifact that goes high in the center and is yellowish for some reason.
I'll get pics tonight and post them tomorrow.

 

H4 Halogen bulb on lowbeam... Half the ligth, but it's where it's supposed to be... Not much light above the middle...

 

Ok, gonna throw this out there, even though this is the 4th or 5th times it's been discussed.

A relay setup, i.e. EasternBeaver.com or homemade, will put out brighter light than stock, and perhaps better than the HID "kits".

 

Agreed, but it is my intention to find a projector and go full HID in the near future. As I needed the ballast, solenoid and wireing harness anyway the DMM seemed a very economical first step. Plus I'll know first hand how a retrofit bulb kit compares to a projector.

 

tweety is on top of things and may very well be correct on this, but... i got more pissed of cagers flashing me on my oem stock 05 gsxr1000 than i did on my hid rc51. i do not recall one flash with the rc51.

 

I appreciate your comments Tweety , BUT I was looking for a alternative lighting system , to replace the "flashlight" that I currently have ..

I didn't want to go through the effort of dismantling my head light , and put in a projector beam , looks fantastic though !

During the day I ride with my Hi beams on ALL the time .. for obvious reasons to be seen , if it pisses people off well to bad !
now with the upgrade I can run with the 35w which is suffice for day and night .

There is a guy down my street who rides a Harley with cutoff exhaust pipes ... trust me its loud and obnoxious , now is it better to be seen or to be heard ?

 

NVDutchie,

I'll give you half and half today, that being half info and half "search".

If you don't want to dismantle to install the HID properly, go my route, Eastern Beaver or similar relay kit and a brighter bulb.

www.easternbeaver.com
www.rallylights.com for the bulb. Very knowledgable, will get you a light that works well, is brighter and usually cheaper than the local parts store even after shipping.

The other half is: use the search function, in the last year, I would venture that there are no less than 3 threads on this very same topic. Including one where a member had a HID headlamp made for him, and then another where his buddy the maker of the HID offered to make them for anyone interested.

 

I know this is a month old, but I promised put the pics up. I don't have a pic of the original Silverstar H4 to compare, but it is brighter.
You can all see that compared to the pics Tweety and others have provided the simple H4 HID is not nearly as wide as when mated to a projector, nor is the pattern as friendly. The low beam particularly has odd yellowish center reflections that are quite high. The high beam is a bit friendlier, but again not like a projector.
During the day (97% of my riding) the head light is much more noticeable from on coming traffic. So I have one more thought/aspect to this upgrade to think about - Projectors (like on my TSX) are quite unnoticeable during daylight to oncoming trafic unless you are in the beam. Sort of like a laser pointer. With this cheap kit, my entire head light reflector is bright. I would say far more noticeable to oncoming daylight traffic.
For now I will ride this way, and a bit later add a projector. the below link seems to be the place to get a projector for the next step.
http://www.theretrofitsource.com/pro...c69217b74a6819

 

what watt and temp did you buy. im getting one on my next paycheck oh and how fast was shipping and did everything go good?

 

Just realized my first sentence was a bit confusing - the HID kit is brighter than the Silverstar. 35w & 5000k Not sure on shipping as it was a Christmas gift. As far as quality, I could not believe how good everything looked.

 

I also agree with Tweety, as I stated above, I and installed a ddm 55w kit on my SW and after reading the discussions had my buddy drive my bike while I cam down my road in the oppostie direction. Now we are oth large guys (200+) so I am assuming that the sag in my front suspension has to have some variance on what the oncoming driver see's, with that being said I did notice between his Yam R6 and my SH that with the DDM kit, it had more of a "sparkle" to it that his normal luight. I know it is not apples to apples with the same bike but I wanted to see what a stock low beam looked like compared to the DDM low bean in the SH housing. As for the "sparkle"... I don't think I would flash the bike coming the other way if I was the cager, you could tell it was brighter but not as bright as a normal high beam that I am used to seeing coming the other direction. Hopefully I am not repeating anythign but just my two cents.