Project: Morimoto HID Retrofit

[HGFireHazard]

I decided that I wanted to do something new to the bike and I do a good amount of riding at night, so I thought a fun project to undertake would be to retrofit a HID kit in. After some browsing and recommendations on the web I went through The Retrofit Source and picked up their Morimoto Bi-Xenon kit. $295 seemed like a relatively inexpensive amount of money so I jumped on it.

I made some great progress a couple days ago. The Morimoto projectors are designed with the back threaded and the kit comes with mounting hardware to work with halogen housings, but unfortunately that isn't good news for us. I attempted to see if this hardware would work, but our housings are a bit too small for the projector to seat correctly.

I also went a step further and cut reliefs into the halogen housings (I figured why not, I won't be needing them after this) to see if the supplied mounting hardware would work. Again, the results were less than favorable. One side, when fully tightened, wasn't making contact with the back of the halogen housing so the projector flopped around a bit. The other side I was able to tighten up pretty good, so I wouldn't rule out that you could in some fashion make that design work, but I already bought the aluminum so I said screw it.

I also strayed a bit from the previous designs and decided to use the brackets on the back of the halogen housing bolted to the aluminum plate that I cut out. I thought it would be easier to do this than cut accurate reliefs for the stock adjuster blocks.

I sprayed the brackets yesterday, and I still have to test the kit, set the projectors level, drill the projector mounting holes, wire the high beam shutters, and adjust some wiring lengths.

Also, for anyone else interested in this kit, take note that if you decide to make brackets, you will need to use precision on the hole you cut for the projector. Unlike the FX35's, the smaller size of these comes with a mounting price. The mounting holes on the projector are relatively close to where the hole will need to be for the projector itself, and you can't just go extra big, otherwise you won't have any material to screw the projector into.

I have some pictures to give you guys a better idea of all I'm talking about.

 

[krid80]

I decided that I wanted to do something new to the bike and I do a good amount of riding at night, so I thought a fun project to undertake would be to retrofit a HID kit in. After some browsing and recommendations on the web I went through The Retrofit Source and picked up their Morimoto Bi-Xenon kit. $295 seemed like a relatively inexpensive amount of money so I jumped on it.

I made some great progress a couple days ago. The Morimoto projectors are designed with the back threaded and the kit comes with mounting hardware to work with halogen housings, but unfortunately that isn't good news for us. I attempted to see if this hardware would work, but our housings are a bit too small for the projector to seat correctly.

I also went a step further and cut reliefs into the halogen housings (I figured why not, I won't be needing them after this) to see if the supplied mounting hardware would work. Again, the results were less than favorable. One side, when fully tightened, wasn't making contact with the back of the halogen housing so the projector flopped around a bit. The other side I was able to tighten up pretty good, so I wouldn't rule out that you could in some fashion make that design work, but I already bought the aluminum so I said screw it.

I also strayed a bit from the previous designs and decided to use the brackets on the back of the halogen housing bolted to the aluminum plate that I cut out. I thought it would be easier to do this than cut accurate reliefs for the stock adjuster blocks.

I sprayed the brackets yesterday, and I still have to test the kit, set the projectors level, drill the projector mounting holes, wire the high beam shutters, and adjust some wiring lengths.

Also, for anyone else interested in this kit, take note that if you decide to make brackets, you will need to use precision on the hole you cut for the projector. Unlike the FX35's, the smaller size of these comes with a mounting price. The mounting holes on the projector are relatively close to where the hole will need to be for the projector itself, and you can't just go extra big, otherwise you won't have any material to screw the projector into.

I have some pictures to give you guys a better idea of all I'm talking about.

ouch, lots of fab! Should have got the chinese bixenon halos.

 

[afpreppie04]

When I first saw the Morimoto HIDs I thought about maybe giving them a shot since I also do a lot of night riding, but I didn't want to be the guinea pig. I might end up going with the Chinese ones too for simplicity's sake, I just worry about the halo part of it burning out, the HID part itself is universally replaceable.

 

[HGFireHazard]

I'll be doing a test run of the lights tonight just to make sure everything works. I'll snap some pictures to show the output and the cutoff.

Hopefully all works well and I can work on the wiring harness between work shifts over the next two days and hopefully wrap up or be wrapped up by the end of Wednesday.

 

[HGFireHazard]

I was wondering if anyone could help me shed some light on how to wire up the shutters on the projector. I e-mailed TRS and the response I got back didn't quite seem to fit how our bikes are designed.

Their response was: "1) you can easily wire up the projectors so the bi-xenon solenoid activates the high beam normally. Basically all you need to do is take the 2 wires coming out the back of the projector, run them over to the halogen high beam side of your headlight and use some "crimp on" wire taps to splice the +/- wires together. It is relatively easy. but if you don't understand I would be happy to provide more detailed info on the setup."

However, our high beam was from a single bulb, and I don't know how our H4 circuit works. Does a typical shutter just open from a loop of voltage? If that's the case I can figure out if the high beam output from the bike is ground or + and I can wire them accordingly.

Any help would be appreciated!

 

[goker]

I believe

Yellow/Black wire for high beam +
Black wire for high beam -

You can check this by hooking up a voltmeter to it.

 

[marklar45]

You did it wrong I used these in my bike and it works great only had to trim the (gatling gun) shrouds. Nothing on my bike was trimmed only thing changed on my bike was painting the reflector and doing headlight mod. Took about 2 hours to do the whole mod.

 

[HGFireHazard]

Goker, I appreciate your input and help, I will take my meter and check those wires and see what I come up with.

Marklar, I have a 2006. Just because of your post I went and re-checked the fitment of the projectors and they still don't sit correctly/flush, even with the reliefs I made. I don't know if there is a difference between '06 and '08 headlights (I'm assuming there is judging by our different results).

However, that doesn't mean I did it wrong

 

[krid80]

Goker, I appreciate your input and help, I will take my meter and check those wires and see what I come up with.

Marklar, I have a 2006. Just because of your post I went and re-checked the fitment of the projectors and they still don't sit correctly/flush, even with the reliefs I made. I don't know if there is a difference between '06 and '08 headlights (I'm assuming there is judging by our different results).

However, that doesn't mean I did it wrong

all headlisghts for FZ6 are the same. they redesigned the fairing for 2007+ bikes but kept the same headlight.

 

[HGFireHazard]

all headlisghts for FZ6 are the same. they redesigned the fairing for 2007+ bikes but kept the same headlight.

That's very interesting. I'll take some pictures to show you guys what it is that I'm talking about.

 

[goker]

That's very interesting. I'll take some pictures to show you guys what it is that I'm talking about.

That would be very nice. I am contemplating same mod using the same projectors as well. It would be nice to know all the road blocks in advance. And yes, headlight assemblies are identical 04-09 bikes (for the faired North American versions, disclaimer for those you at other part of the world. )

Also, I would not mind seeing pictures of the marklar45's approach because he is talking about "painting the reflectors" which you take off with this mod as far as I know.

 

[HGFireHazard]

I, for the most part, have this wrapped up. The bike is mostly back together with the exception of the wind screen and the inner black fairing so I can adjust the headlights tonight.

Regarding the previous user that was able to fit these into his halogen housings and use the mounting hardware provided, I'd ask to know how. If the housings are the same, the H4 side didn't work at all. The H7 side I was able to secure relatively well after I had cut reliefs in the housing, but it still wiggled a little bit.

When I re-attempted to do the H4 side after the previous poster saying he did, it could not be done, for me anyhow. The bracket provided to fit between the back of the housing and the locking nut did not make contact with the housing. There was roughly a 1/6" gap. Unless you stuffed something in that gap all the projector would do is flop around and it wouldn't work. This was with the locking nut tightened as far as the threads went.

I may have gotten some type of poor quality controlled either headlight assembly or HID kit or both, or I may have even screwed something up and done something dumb, but I'd say I'm a pretty smart guy and I wouldn't feel comfortable telling someone they could go ahead and get this kit and it would fit and work guaranteed in the halogen housings on our bikes.

That being said, I also had to cut off roughly 1/4" of the shroud bottoms to seat them completely over the projector. This was super simple with a Dremel and cutting disc.

I mounted the ballasts under my seat. As for the harness, I lengthened the wires that connect to the H7 plug as well as both ballast to bulb connections. The extensions of all parts was necessary in order to reach where it needed to. I also shortened one of the harness to ballast connections as the harness was designed for automotive use and was way too long.

I placed the relay and ran much of the wiring through the little pouch on the left side of the bike that is near the suspension shock. The relay fit perfectly and I had just enough length to run the + wire to the battery and ground to one of the bolts behind the left rear panel.

I'll have a couple more pictures tonight after I get things adjusted and completely put back together.

 

[brad81987]

ouch, lots of fab! Should have got the chinese bixenon halos.

The Chinese ones may be easier to install, but the output of the Morimotos is vastly superior in width and brightness. I invite everyone to check out HIDplanet forums. There are photo threads comparing all the bi-xenon projectors. The Chinese ones are referred to as Aftermarket G1, the Morimotos are also referred to as Mini H1, as they are small and use a H1 HID kit bulb, as opposed to a D2S bulb.

 

[marklar45]

I hope this explains how I did it also here is a link to the kit if anyone else is interested and I'll get some pics of my setup in the next day or two. Mini H1 kit

 

[goker]

I hope this explains how I did it also here is a link to the kit if anyone else is interested and I'll get some pics of my setup in the next day or two. Mini H1 kit

That would be great if you could do that. I didn't think these projectors fit in the housing with the reflectors in there.

 

[HGFireHazard]

Here we go, pics. The road I'm on is pretty slanted so if you think the cut off looks terrible, don't worry, on a wall it looks straight and blue!

 

[marklar45]

I took my fairing off today to install some new blinkers so I went ahead and took some pics of my install.

 

[jrevans]

I took my fairing off today to install some new blinkers so I went ahead and took some pics of my install.

Mark, those look sweet in there.

Interesting that you were able to get it to work without using custom brackets like HGFireHazard had to use. I wonder what the difference was? Was it just notching the shrouds? I thought that HGFireHazard made it sound like the actual cast metal housing didn't fit correctly into the FZ6 headlight.

Could you just have installed the projectors without shrouds to avoid trimming them? I'm wondering what it would look like without shrouds installed.

Any particular reason that you chose to paint the reflector, instead of leaving it silver? Just personal preference?

I'll have to check out the forums where they compare the light output from the different setups, as I really liked the look of the angel eye setups (chinese) which are so cheap, and appear to be easy to install.

 

[LunchBox04V]

I was looking into doing the Morimoto Mini as well. I figured out what the issue is. The OP was using D2S Morimoto Mini, not the H1's. That is why he had to do all the custom fab work. Get the H1's and you should be good to go, just slide them through the reflector, and ta-da.