Headlight bulbs? What to use.

[dduelin]

That brief warm up is still an issue for lighting HIDs quickly in high beams. In the case of the H4s in my ST1300, the bulb would move back and forth to place the arc in the position of either the low or high beam. There were guards/shields to direct the light. Worked well. In the case of both my Super Ténéré and my Ford Mustang, the projector housing moves a shutter to direct the light for high or low. The Yamaha only uses a single filament incandescent bulb as OEM.

An HID arc more closely approximates a filament than an LED because it shines out at 360° and can be closely located and centered where the filament would be. The source however is kind of barrel shaped instead of cylindrical compared to an incandescent lamp though.

LEDs are the wave of the future with OEM designed reflectors to accommodate them.

LEDs sold for at least the last 5 years that are 1:1 in emitter placement work well in OEM reflectors. I can say I never got or get flashed by oncoming traffic using 1:1 LEDs and the light placement is excellent with lack of scatter and sharply defined cut-off. Plug and play rock and roll.

 

[Andrew Shadow]

Misplaced worry. I've run similar constructed LEDs in my 2006 Wing and 2007 BMW for many thousands of miles with no ill effects. To the contrary LEDs outperform any incandescent I ever used.

Curiosity based on ignorance due my lack of direct or indirect experience with a cooling fan mounted inside the reflector is more to the point.

Speaking of which, the last set of LED's that I remember you posting about having installed were the ones that were the latest recommendation from spiderman302 of this site for that time. I don't remember those being ones which had the cooling fan mounted inside the headlamp reflector, mostly because I have never seen that design before. Just want to make sure that we are discussing the same thing.

 

[dduelin]

Curiosity based on ignorance due my lack of direct or indirect experience with a cooling fan mounted inside the reflector is more to the point.

Speaking of which, the last set of LED's that I remember you posting about having installed were the ones that were the latest recommendation from spiderman302 of this site for that time. I don't remember those being ones which had the cooling fan mounted inside the headlamp reflector, mostly because I have never seen that design before. Just want to make sure that we are discussing the same thing.

If they were in my 2005 ST1300 that may be correct. F6 (???) had the "wings" for the beam cutoff and external fans but I sold it in 2018. The LEDs that went into the Wing in 2022 were Auxito H7s with an internal fan behind the emitters and the H7 LEDs that went into the BMW 50,000 miles ago are Suparee H7s with a fan forward design with fans out in front of the emitters.