Tweety

That link is to a HID bulb setup... There are several reasons why a HID bulb in the stock reflector is a very, very bad idea... I'm to lazy to tell you why, go read a few old threads and it will be pretty clear...

If you then still want too get that kit, be my guest, but it's cheaper to buy a quality ballast and the right type bulb for the projector than buying that thing and throwing away all but the ballast to build a true projector HID... You can't re-use the harness, or the bulb and the ballast is of questionable quality... The actual wires might work as material, but other than that it's money in the trash...

7moore7

If you contact TRS- The Retrofit Source- they can get you a HID projector/bulb/ballast/ all that wiring stuff that I know nothing about.

They mostly do car setups, but they happily set up a one bulb package for you with everything you need. I was very happy when dealing with Matt...

Disclaimer: I have not set up my bulb yet, but it DOES have all the correct plugs...

dehning

I've fitted DDM Tuning kits to all my other bikes but I've never fitted a projector, is the reflector on the SH that bad even with the light output of a 55W HID lamp ?

A 55W 5000K DDM lamp in my CBR1100xx is absolutely stunning.

Tweety

No, the reflector is actualy pretty decent for such a large bowl... But no offence meant, but it's like asking if an axe is a good option for trimming your fingernails... The axe is very, very good at chopping wood, and decidedly sharp enough for the work, but I wouldn't use it for trimming nails, would you?

The design of the headlight is a single H4 bulb in a single reflector... The bulb then has two separate filaments for high and low beam... The reflector and lense (yeah, the plastic part shaped to the fairing) have a pattern of corresponding areas directing the light...

With a stock H4 halogen bulb, even with the small variations in tolerances from the manufacturer, the light from the lowbeam filament hits acertain part of the reflector and lense, forming the wide, short and slighly offset pattern... The highbeam hits other areas shaped differently and creates a much more narrow beam, that is more focused and reaches further...

If you remove the stock H4 bulb and drop in whatever "HID H4" bulb (which doesn't exist BTW, check the meaning of H4) the result is a much much brighter lightsource than both filaments together, which is good, but the pure nature of the HID bulb makes the lightsource impossible to position in the correct place to hit either spot as the low or high beam...

The reason is that the lightsource in a HID has an entirely different shape than a filament in a bulb, and it's also larger and shaped differently... So you either hit both, neither or a mix of the two... The result is a pretty scattered light output, with great chances of blinding oncoming drivers...

Now, there are a number of solutions to this that has been tried... One is a mix of a halogen bulb for lowbeam and a HID for highbeam, which are terrible since the HID needs time to warm up, so when you hit the highbeam you get a couple of seconds of dim light... Then there are a moving shield to mimick two separate filaments... That still means you get two half arsed attempts at hittin the right spot optically for both, and scattered light...

The best solution, and the only one that is acceptable to use really, is a lowbeam only HID bulb... That mean the bulb manufacturer puts the HID in the correct spot, and puts a static shield to limit light hitting the reflector in the wrong areas and causing glare... That way you get a very, very good lowbeam, which is usually good enough to replace both high and lowbeam of the standard setup...

But there is a defenite downside to cheap Chinese manufacturing... The HID bulbs made as lowbeam only bulbs rarely hit the right spot in the optics... The tolerances are really, really small...

You get more useable light from upgrading the wiring to provide the correct voltage to the H4 bulb, than from dropping in a cheap HID bulb in the stock reflector, and a lot less glare...

Now people argue that "glare makes sure the drivers see me!", well fine... they see your light allright... But what do you prefer, a 1-2 ton vehicle approaching you where the driver knows you are there somewhere for sure, but not exactly where, or if it takes 1-2 seconds more to get noticed, and he can actually pin point your location since he's not blinded? Even if it might somtimes feel like the cages deliberatly aim at us, I prefer the second option personally...

A year or two ago, the people arguing the case for a drop in bulb had one argument though... It takes a hell of a lot more work to take a projector and retrofit it into the stock housing, making everything fit nicely... That is, if you use a generic projector, or one made for another projector...

Now though, that argument is dead... Because now you can buy a projector specifically designed to mount to the shield of a stock H4 type housing, with almost no modification at all... That way you can aim it like stock, and it all fits inside like stock... The only thing you need to "modify" really, is specific to the VTR (and a lot of bikes)... To get in and mount it, you need to open the housing by gently heating the goop that seals the two halves, and then reverse that to put it together...

And trust me... A full retrofit on your blackbird will blow that drop-in HID out of the water without even trying... A projector has a hemisperic lense, focusing the light to a much, much greater degree than the reflector and fresnel lense of the stock setup is capable of even with the correct optic placement, and that combined with a HID bulb is a whole other thing entirely...

Instead of an eBay link that will expire, seach "Morimoto Mini" and you will find it... The projector includes a screw on adapter to fit it in place of the H4 bulbs mountpoint at the reflector...

7moore7

The reflector is designed for and works great with an H4 bulb, especially with an upgraded wiring harness.

It's probably not much if any worse than your other bikes for and HID bulb... but that's not saying much.

It's just a question of what your goal is with your light. If all you want is bright pretty colors jumping around in front of you, then it will work amazing. If you want a controlled light with a clean cutoff line, then a projector retrofit is worth looking into.

7moore7

Dang, beat me to it, and you used a lot more... uh.. words...