DDM 35W 5000K HIDs in the Buell headlights

[dturpen]

One of my headlights went out recently (turned out to be a kink in the wire rather than the bulb :spank, so I decided to get some new brighter headlights, since I do a lot of night riding. I work 3pm-12am, so I actually do MOST of my riding at night.

Anyway, I bought the DDM tuning kit since it was about the same price as a new set of brighter bulbs, and they carry a really good warranty. I was a little worried about the quality of the kit, but when they came in, I was very impressed. The headlights shipped very quickly, and the ballasts and bulbs are packaged well, and seem like they are of very good quality.

I should've taken some pictures of the kit before the install, but I was so excited to get everything put in, that I didn't take the time to do it. I thought that it might be difficult to wire everything together, but it turned out to be very easy.

There are only a few connections. You connect the ballasts to the bulbs with three connections, and then there are two wires that have male spade connectors on the end: a positive wire, and a negative/ground wire. It's literally as easy as connecting the ballasts to the bulbs and then plugging the positive and negative male spade connectors into the factory headlight connector. Make sure that you connect the wires to the correct side of the factory harness. In my case the factory harness negative wire was black on both sides, and the positive wire was yellow on one side and white on the other.

It will be a bit different for a stock FZ6, since the stock FZ6 has one H7 and one H4, but it should still be fairly easy.

I just hid the ballasts and connections back behind my Buell windscreen after testing to make sure everything worked, and voila! I now have much brighter headlights.

I don't see any scattering of the beam in my experience, and it seems to have a pretty sharp cutoff. I still have some room for adjustment to aim the beams down if needed, but I haven't had anyone flash me yet, so I don't think they're blinding oncoming drivers. Even if they are, I can still aim them down a bit.

I'll take more pictures of the beams themselves after it gets darker, but here's a few pics that I already took. Excuse the quality, they are from my cell phone.

 

[Erci]

Very nice! I'd love to do that, but I'm running twin dominator setup with no fairing.. no place to hide ballasts.

 

[dturpen]

Very nice! I'd love to do that, but I'm running twin dominator setup with no fairing.. no place to hide ballasts.

You could always extend the wires and put the ballasts under the tank or seat. That's what I was going to do if they didn't fit behind the windscreen.

 

[Erci]

You could always extend the wires and put the ballasts under the tank or seat. That's what I was going to do if they didn't fit behind the windscreen.

Space under tank is absolutely full. That's where I stuffed original wiring when I converted to naked.
Under seat would be the only way to go. I'll add that to my future-mods list

 

[reiobard]

Space under tank is absolutely full. That's where I stuffed original wiring when I converted to naked.
Under seat would be the only way to go. I'll add that to my future-mods list

There is a nice little area just in front of the hinge that works very well for a ballast, also you can get the "Slim" ballasts that are really tiny.

 

[rsw81]

I'm going to go ahead and be the first to say it since I do have quite a bit of experience in this... but HID's don't belong in halogen reflectors. The headlight might look brighter to you looking at it, but the amount of usable light hitting the road is probably worse than your stock halogens. This has to do with where on the bulb is the light being emitted from, which is different on halogens vs HIDs. Thus, the focal point of the reflector housing isn't designed properly for this use. In order to properly make use of HID bulbs, you need to either find reflector housings made for HID or go to projectors, which would obviously change the look of your bike pretty significantly.

I do think this looks really cool and its great that you were able to hide the ballasts under the wind screen. However, even in the low res cell phone pictures, you can see how much light is being scattered into the camera.

For the sake of experiment, would you be willing to take a picture of a wall with the halogen headlights on vs the HID headlights?

 

[08fz6]

I'm going to go ahead and be the first to say it since I do have quite a bit of experience in this... but HID's don't belong in halogen reflectors. The headlight might look brighter to you looking at it, but the amount of usable light hitting the road is probably worse than your stock halogens. This has to do with where on the bulb is the light being emitted from, which is different on halogens vs HIDs. Thus, the focal point of the reflector housing isn't designed properly for this use. In order to properly make use of HID bulbs, you need to either find reflector housings made for HID or go to projectors, which would obviously change the look of your bike pretty significantly.

I do think this looks really cool and its great that you were able to hide the ballasts under the wind screen. However, even in the low res cell phone pictures, you can see how much light is being scattered into the camera.

For the sake of experiment, would you be willing to take a picture of a wall with the halogen headlights on vs the HID headlights?

plus you will blind the people coming at you....

 

[dturpen]

I'm going to go ahead and be the first to say it since I do have quite a bit of experience in this... but HID's don't belong in halogen reflectors. The headlight might look brighter to you looking at it, but the amount of usable light hitting the road is probably worse than your stock halogens. This has to do with where on the bulb is the light being emitted from, which is different on halogens vs HIDs. Thus, the focal point of the reflector housing isn't designed properly for this use. In order to properly make use of HID bulbs, you need to either find reflector housings made for HID or go to projectors, which would obviously change the look of your bike pretty significantly.

I do think this looks really cool and its great that you were able to hide the ballasts under the wind screen. However, even in the low res cell phone pictures, you can see how much light is being scattered into the camera.

For the sake of experiment, would you be willing to take a picture of a wall with the halogen headlights on vs the HID headlights?

I've heard this before, and I realize that I don't have a proper projector, but a proper projector wouldn't fit inside the Buell headlight housing. I've seen someone shoehorn a projector housing into the Buell headlights, but they had to take the lens cover completely off, and the projectors stuck out past the rest of the headlight housing, and it looked terrible.

I would be interested to know if I could modify the reflectors to output better light, so if you have any ideas, let me know.

I would totally do a comparison for you, but I accidentally broke one of the spade connectors on one of the headlights, and ended up just soldering the wires from the headlights directly into the factory headlight harness. I realize that this will make it more difficult if I ever have to replace the bulbs, but I was in a hurry, and didn't feel like going out to buy another connector.

plus you will blind the people coming at you....

This has not been my experience at all. Not one person has flashed me since I've had them installed and I've done a fair bit of riding in town with traffic. I keep the low beams on almost the entire time, which is just the one side, and only use my high beams during the daytime, or if there's no oncoming traffic. I feel like if they were bothering people, they would let me know.

I can say that the beam pattern looks fine to me and I don't feel like the light is just scattered everywhere. As I mentioned earlier in the post, I notice a fairly sharp cutoff line where the light stops, and it doesn't seem to blind anyone at all since I have the beam aimed properly and not too high. In fact, the cutoff looks pretty similar to the halogen bulbs that were in there before.

As soon as I get some time, I will post pictures of the beam pattern facing a wall, and you guys will see that it's not that bad.

 

[dturpen]

All in all, I think it was worth it to me to buy this kit as opposed to a set of halogens. I realize it's not the optimal setup for the bulbs, but my options are somewhat limited in my particular case. Plus, the HID kit was about the same price, and in some cases cheaper, than a comparable set of halogen bulbs.

 

[rsw81]

There's not any way of modifying your current reflector to work properly. What you might be able to do is find a reflector that has the same overall diameter as your current unit that was designed for HIDs. This, if possible, would be the best solution to keep the look of the Buell headlight but increasing the usefulness of the HIDs.

I agree that projectors wouldn't look right with your current setup...

 

[FB400]

I
I can say that the beam pattern looks fine to me and I don't feel like the light is just scattered everywhere. As I mentioned earlier in the post, I notice a fairly sharp cutoff line where the light stops, and it doesn't seem to blind anyone at all since I have the beam aimed properly and not too high. In fact, the cutoff looks pretty similar to the halogen bulbs that were in there before.

I have the DDM kits on mine. I couldn't agree with you more. This is my favorite mod so far. As to light output, there is plenty of it with the 35 watt kit. Likewise I have never been flashed by oncoming cars. I found this a nice alternative to prying apart the headlight to install projectors of which I can't stand the look of halo's anyway. Very happy I did this mod

 

[dturpen]

Here are a few pics of the beam.

Low beams only:

High beams and low beams:

Pretty clear cutoff, eh? Especially on the low beams.

 

[rsw81]

It is certainly better than most halogen reflectors that I've seen, but there is still definitely some glare coming above the cutoff lines. I think as long as you keep it aimed low enough, you'll be fine, but I'd still research into some HID reflectors to get better usable light on the road.

When I originally did my HID's on the FZ6, I just put them in the stock reflectors. It was certainly better than the stock halogens in terms of usable light. But it wasn't until I did the projector retrofit that I realized just how much light I wasn't using before. Excuse the pun, but it was night and day when comparing the halogen reflector to the projector.