My motorcycle came with halogen bulb headlight. I found a drop-in replacement (driver included with the cables and plugs). It’s the only one I knew at the time and although somewhat expensive had a good reputation among bikers. It was Cyclops, with 4 Cree (don’t know what model) 5700K/2500lm, 38W LEDs. That was a few years ago.
I wonder if people know of and have an experience with H4 headlight replacements. What’s good these days?
This topic has been beaten to death. Don’t replace halogen light in a reflector with a LED. There is no LED that has the same characteristic of a burning filament. You have to replace the whole light assembly to get similar light pattern in a head light. It’s dangerous and irresponsible to self and other road users.
There is no effective way to replicate the size and position of a halogen filament with a led emitter.
If this is say a 7" round, or other common size there are a few led specific lights that may be ok. JW Speaker comes to mind. They are expensive however.
Don’t. You’ll never get a decent pattern from LED vs halogen.
Ancient history, but a bud had a… Yamaha?.. whose voltage regulator needed lots of load to regulate correctly. When he lightened the load, thinking less load on the alternator would be more power to the wheel, the voltage started soaring and fried a bunch of stuff. That’s how he found out the hard way.
Doubt modern bikes have that problem, but you never know.
Still, just from the point of seeing and being seen, best to just stick with halogens. OEM reflectors and glass are designed with them in mind.
I pretty much replaced all my cars’ exterior (and interior, but irrelevant to the point) lighting with LEDs except the headlights.
That’s the drop-in replacement light that I have used for the last 5 years. It seems to work fine, light pattern wise etc. I wasn’t aware that there have been many warnings or discussions on it.
That’s a !@#$y design. What if the bulb blows out in the middle of nowhere. Then you don’t only have darkness, you also have a dead bike. Yikes!
Yuck, that bulb is really not great.
This thread has some great discussion.
This has been discussed deeply on the <st-owners.com> forum for years because the OEM ST-1300 H4 bulbs are slightly proprietary ( read $ $ $ ) from Honda. Standard H4’s will work with an easy & tiny mod. Probably been discussed on other bike forums too that I haven’t seen.
I can buy eight or so name brand (Candlepower & Bosch come to mind), standard H4 Halogen bulbs for what that Cyclops costs. Less, for NOS H4’s, at the yearly AMA Vintage Motorcycle Days swap meet in Lexington, OH.
The depth of LED assemblies won’t fit in some MC headlight shells. Many of the the rubber grommets that fit over the installed Halogen H4 sockets that are meant to keep water from contaminating the reflector/lens areas won’t fit over LED drop-ins without butchering them.
The reflector & lens system of a H4 motorcycle headlight are designed to work together to focus light from what essentially are 360-degree point sources (the filaments). No LED matches that.
H4 motorcycle headlight lenses are a variation of a Fresnel lens (sometimes called a ‘toric’ lens) that have facets that create a very particular pattern not needed on cages. Many bike headlight reflectors have multiple facets as well. All designed for one shrouded & one un-shrouded H4 filament, each at a precise location,
No LED matches the color temp or CRI of a halogen bulb. That can be a minor issue with some signage.
No drop in LED has earned DOT approval, if one cares about that.
I’ve seen some bikes head on at night whose owners clearly bought into the fleaBay / Amazing-on Chinesium-shyster marketing of “Enjoy Ten-Eight-Hundred-Bazillion’ Bright Chinese Lumens for Your Bike!!! No knowledge or special tools needed!!!” Blinding from any angle & poor throw down the road where needed.
If one wants a LED headlight for a bike, buy a good, complete LED headlight assembly designed for a bike.
/rant
slmjim