LED H4's SO MUCH CHOICE, where to start?

[Sadanorakman]

I'm ready to fit my newly arrived MadStad Windshield, so at the same time, I'm going to replace the headlamp bulbs with LED's.
I had already purchased some, but sent them back, as they arrived as 2-pin bulbs, not hi-beam and low-beam.

I read the post re SOCAL LED's with their woven braided heatsinks, and how people struggled to fit the braids in due to lack of space behind the headlamp. Being in the UK, it's prohibitively expensive to import this kind of thing, and I only ride about 3000 miles a year at the moment anyway, so looking to spend about £40-£50 for a pair locally, not splash out £100-£150.

I was therefore wondering if there's room behind the lamp housing to accommodate the type of LED H4 that has the fan and heatsink on it's rear? Any advice please?

I trust Osram, and Philips, and thought I'd give a pair of these a go: https://www.philips.co.uk/c-p/LUM11258U ... ight-bulbs , but if there's not room behind the headlamp for these heatsinks, it's a non-starter.

At least Philips are honest about the reduced life-span of the LED in their product, stating 3000 Hours. All the chinese ones make unrealistic claims of 50,000 or even 100,000 hours, which is complete and utter nonsense.

Its such a crap-shoot to know what to buy, as there are so many poor chinese versions with Amazon feedback saying they failed in a few hours/days/weeks, or the beam pattern was rubbish etc... Cooling for LED's is absolutely paramount, as they soon dim and fail if the LED chips are over-driven (as they are in such an application) and not properly cooled.

There are passively-cooled versions with only heatsinks (No Fans) inside the headlamp unit.
I wouldn't touch these, as there's no way they could dissipate enough heat:

Then There are similar designs, but with a tiny fan built in, but still dissipating heat to within the headlamp unit its self:

And even ones with a fan on the front end, but not sure if this would collide with the internal optics of the headlamp:

Whatever I buy, must have the LED's in the identical location to the Filaments of a traditional H4, otherwise the beam pattern is going to be a complete non-starter. Our annual road-worthyness test in the UK (MOT) has completely clamped down on replacing Halogen bulbs with LED's on cars, but you can still get a motorcycle through as long as the beam pattern is correct on the MOT testing station's beam checker (It's an optical box that they place in front of the lamp, and you see the beam pattern projected onto a small screen inside it):

Although my GL1500 is a 2000 SE, Its a UK-spec bike, so still has the original-style non-clear headlight glass (i.e it's heavily lined) . I'm wondering if this has the original true H4 bulb-tab spacing, or that of the newer clear-plastic-lensed units, where I'd need to cut off two of the tabs and use a corrective shim? I guess I'll find out when I take it all apart!

[gford]

With all that misery, why not leave the headlights as they are OEM?

[Sadanorakman]

Interesting watch. These guys have done their research!:
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[WingAdmin]

With all that misery, why not leave the headlights as they are OEM?

Because there ARE good LED options, and the beam brightness and coverage of LED headlights far eclipses what you can get from halogen OEMs.

[Sadanorakman]

With all that misery, why not leave the headlights as they are OEM?

Because:

1. its an SE, which means the OEM halogen driving lights (2 x 18W) switch on before the dipped headlights (2x45W). With all four lamps running (126 Watts), the hit on the OEM Alternator is quite high (Circa 10 Amps), and drags the output voltage down too much for my liking at slow speeds (riding in traffic). There is no real balance of charge at tickover/low revs, which un-nerves me

2. The OEM low beam headlamps provide barely adequate forward lighting for riding an unlit road: I'd like more light, but not just auxilliary driving lights that I must switch off when a vehicle drives toward me.

At the moment, I run the OEM driving lights as day-time running lights so people can notice me. I purposely don't also run the dipped-beam due to the marginal charging situation. Only when it's dark.

It's not unreasonable to expect a half-decently engineered replacement LED lamp to provide a bit more light, whilst drawing only 1/4 of the power. The problem is sorting the wheat from the chaff, as there is so much cheap crap out there, and price-alone brings no guarantee of quality.

I've already got some replacement H6M LED bulbs for the OEM driving lights, and have gone with yellow to draw more attention as daylight running lights. These year 2000 clear-lensed OEM Driving lamps don't offer much forward lighting anyway (not really any better than the older OEM cornering lamps), so the LED's I've bought for those are not particularly high wattage: I just want them to allow me to be seen, not to create useful light to ride with.

So the LED h6M's will save me quite some current draw over the original 18 Watt bulbs. I'd just like to do something also in the headlight department.

[Sadanorakman]

With all that misery, why not leave the headlights as they are OEM?

Because there ARE good LED options, and the beam brightness and coverage of LED headlights far eclipses what you can get from halogen OEMs.

Bang-on WingAdmin thank you. It's just finding which are going to be reliable, and with good beam pattern.

Most people review soon after purchase, not a year later. This means there is little reliability feedback beyond the DOA or very early (few hours or days) failures.

Our MOT testing is also stringent, so the beam pattern must pass the test with a level; sharp beam cut-off, and certain vertical and horizontal alignment. The government banned use of all Halogen to LED conversions for on-road-use in March 2021 (to be clear, swapping the bulbs in the original lamp housings), but then immediately backtracked for Motorcycles only with an ammendment https://www.tomcc.org/Home/News/06ea406 ... d2025938dc, which is really lucky for me! Cars/van/lorries though will fail their MOT for replacing the original Halogen bulb for LED. It's allowed to swap the entire headlamp unit for an LED one, but of course that whole unit needs to be regulation compliant.

[blupupher]

I have used these on my Honda Shadow 1100, Nighthawk 750 and GL1500 (but they were a 2 pack offer when I got them).
In all those housings they provided a good beam similar to halogen and were bright enough for me.

The only issue is will they pass MOT? No idea. As I said, beam appears similar, but having a machine verify it could be a different result.

As for the style of bulb, I went with one that has no fan or large heatsink.
Primarily because any bulb with a fan or large heatsink would not have fit in the Shadow housing, just not enough room. Similar for the Nighthawk.
I used them on the 1500 because of the experience I had before.
My Shadow had it on for almost a year/2,500 miles, Nighthawk was 4 months/1000 miles, and the 1500 was 18 months/9,000 miles.
All bikes were sold before I had any issues with them, but don't really count the Nighthawk since I did not have it for a real long time.

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[Sadanorakman]

I have used these on my Honda Shadow 1100, Nighthawk 750 and GL1500 (but they were a 2 pack offer when I got them).
In all those housings they provided a good beam similar to halogen and were bright enough for me.

Cool. I see the predicament of closed-shell headlamps, and their lack of space.

All I can think is these must be lower wattage than the actively cooled ones, to keep the temperature of the LEDs in check. They do also say 4000 lumens in the advert, where most of the actively-cooled ones claim 5000 or 6000 lumens at least (if you can ever trust any of the figures!).
They do seem to have nice small led arrays that match the filament placement of a traditional bulb though.

@blupupher, firstly thank you for sharing your experience. Do you notice any dimming of these once they've been illuminated for a few minutes? Seems most LED drivers in these type of bulbs will throttle the brightness down once they hit a certain temperature, to prevent catastrophic damage.

Thanks again.

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[WingAdmin]

These have been in my GL1500 now for over four years and many thousands of miles, and they are fantastic. Super bright, perfect cutoffs, just the best I've ever used: viewtopic.php?f=18&t=45345

[blupupher]

I have used these on my Honda Shadow 1100, Nighthawk 750 and GL1500 (but they were a 2 pack offer when I got them).
In all those housings they provided a good beam similar to halogen and were bright enough for me.

Cool. I see the predicament of closed-shell headlamps, and their lack of space.

All I can think is these must be lower wattage than the actively cooled ones, to keep the temperature of the LEDs in check. They do also say 4000 lumens in the advert, where most of the actively-cooled ones claim 5000 or 6000 lumens at least (if you can ever trust any of the figures!).
They do seem to have nice small led arrays that match the filament placement of a traditional bulb though.

@blupupher, firstly thank you for sharing your experience. Do you notice any dimming of these once they've been illuminated for a few minutes? Seems most LED drivers in these type of bulbs will throttle the brightness down once they hit a certain temperature, to prevent catastrophic damage.

Thanks again.

I did not notice any dimming of them (except when my alternator was going out).
I knew they were 4000 lumen, and maybe that is how they get away with not having any external cooling on it? I also have no way to verify how many lumen they actually are either.

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[Jonny426f]

I have been using an H4F3B from Socal moto gear for 2 years now with no issues about fitment on my 82 aspencade. I did end up using a few small washers to gain a bit more airflow around the bulb but it fit even before that change. It has a fan-not much airflow behind the bulb-so it should last. The beam has a decent cutoff in the stock housing with a bit of a "smile" to the pattern at the edges which helps on unlit roads. The claimed 6000lm and 6000k seem legit-very bright and very white. Previous owner had a 100w incandescent in it, very yellow, weak yet blinding to oncoming traffic as well as using a lot of power. You said importing was cost prohibitive but I can recommend this LED even at a higher price point. I tried 4 other brands with poor results (over claimed brightness, terrible beam pattern) so I know the market is flooded with over hyped junk. Good luck in your search!

[WingAdmin]

I have been using an H4F3B from Socal moto gear for 2 years now with no issues about fitment on my 82 aspencade. I did end up using a few small washers to gain a bit more airflow around the bulb but it fit even before that change. It has a fan-not much airflow behind the bulb-so it should last. The beam has a decent cutoff in the stock housing with a bit of a "smile" to the pattern at the edges which helps on unlit roads. The claimed 6000lm and 6000k seem legit-very bright and very white. Previous owner had a 100w incandescent in it, very yellow, weak yet blinding to oncoming traffic as well as using a lot of power. You said importing was cost prohibitive but I can recommend this LED even at a higher price point. I tried 4 other brands with poor results (over claimed brightness, terrible beam pattern) so I know the market is flooded with over hyped junk. Good luck in your search!

Just a note about using LEDs in the older 1100's etc: often the parabolic mirror inside the headlight fixture on those bikes has tarnished, so putting a light as bright as the sun in there is still not going to put a huge amount of light out front. In those cases, you're usually best served by replacing the entire fixture with an LED fixture, which will far outperform an LED bulb pushed into a 40-year old reflector.

Any standard 7 inch motorcycle LED headlight should fit.

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[77Goldwing]

I cannot speak to newer Goldwings, but fitted my 1977 with this headlight from Walmart ($30) and it seems to work fine. Brighter than the incandescent that used to reside there, fits in the Windjammer nacelle, and retains it's brightness at idle. I did not try and hook up the daytime running light halo ring because the headlight is on all the time; it's own DRL.

LABLT Black Motorcycle 7 Inch Round LED Headlight with High/Low Beam Amber & White DRL Halo Ring Angle Eyes

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[grahamlang]

why do you feel the need to dazel oncoming road users with super bright headlights, maybe out of ajustment? yes i see people say they can see so much further up the road, how far do you need to see? ride within your stopping distance.

[klppdx70]

why do you feel the need to dazel oncoming road users with super bright headlights, maybe out of ajustment? yes i see people say they can see so much further up the road, how far do you need to see? ride within your stopping distance.

A 'super bright headlight', when not 'out of adjustment', is far superior to any version that is less so. This is particularly true of any application where seeing is critical to the activity. To answer your question 'how far do I need to see?', I would respond - as absolutely far as damn well possible. This has nothing to do with dazzling anybody, or stopping distance, and everything to do with the safe operation of the vehicle.

[Sadanorakman]

why do you feel the need to dazel oncoming road users with super bright headlights, maybe out of ajustment? yes i see people say they can see so much further up the road, how far do you need to see? ride within your stopping distance.

If you'd have read my initial posts, you'd understand that this would need to pass a very stringent annual road-worthiness test, where they use an optical box to accurately measure the beam pattern emitted by the headlamp.

To pass, it will need to have a clean horizontal cut-off, and if it has an angled kick-up to illuminate kerb, this must only start at a certain horizontal point. The whole beam must be within certain vertical and horizontal alignments such that the dipped beam will NOT dazzle any oncoming vehicles. This ensures no light is transmitted directly into their line of sight; it should all be below.

Modern projector headlights (the ones with thick glass bulbous lenses inside) have an internal mask, which defines the shape of the horizontal dipped-beam cut-off, although LEDs tend to not produce much brighter results in these lamp housings.

The only way to achieve a good beam pattern with a reflector-based headlamp, is to have a replacement bulb with very small LEDs, in exactly the same position as the filaments in the original halogen bulb that it is replacing, so that the reflector bends the light in the original pattern it was designed to.

The H4 bulb is designed to block DOWNWARD light from its dipped beam filament, only allowing light upward into the top half of the headlamp reflector, which is subsequently reflected DOWN toward the road surface, hence the term 'low-beam' or 'dipped-beam'.

The main beam filament is not shielded, and also positioned nearer to the back of the reflector, where an optical focal-point is designed to throw a narrower light beam further down the road, whilst using both the the upper and lower surfaces of the reflector to give the 'full beam' pattern.

[Sadanorakman]

I decided that due to both reliability and the strict beam-pattern requirements of our annual road worthiness 'MOT' test, I would go for either a mainstream Philips or Osram product. I didn't want to potentially throw money away on a product that either failed the beam requirements, or physically failed after a few hours or days of use.

After some research, both Philips and Osram offer a range of products starting from under £40 ($49 USD) per pair, running all the way to £190 ($234 USD) per pair.
If I had imported some Pathfinder H4's like WingAdmins, these would cost me £170 ($210 USD) by the time i'd paid shipping, import duty and value added tax, and I'd have difficulty with any warranty support.

I was going to go with the Osram XTR at approx £42 ($52 USD) for a pair. These have a built in fan, draw 13 Watts of electrical power each, and have reasonable reliability statistics.

I then managed to find a pair of Osram HL's for £60 ($74 USD) new in box on ebay, as opposed to their main high-street price of £75 ($92 USD) per pair, so i have ordered these instead!

These have passive heatsinks (No fans), and therefore increased reliability statistics compared with the XTR's. They also have a 5 year warranty.
They only draw 14.5 Watts of electricity each compared with WingAdmin's Socal pathfinder LEDs at 24 Watts each, but I'm really OK with that: An LED's efficiency decreases the more you over-drive them, i.e. if you double the supply current, you may only get 30% more useful luminance, but 70% more waste heat dissipated.
These are still rated considerably brighter than a 60/55W Halogen, and I believe the GL1500's Halogens are even less at only 45/45W.


I will post an update once I have them fitted, along with comparative beam shots. My MOT isn't until May, so the ultimate test will have to wait several months!


Our MOT test will measure beam allignment as follows:

Headlamp Aim:

Dipped Beam image:

Main Beam image:

[detdrbuzzard]

i had a set of F2 LED bulbs sitting around waiting to go in my ST 1100 ( i have them in the Mighty ST 1300 ) so i decided to put them in my 1500 Wing last summer and order another set for the ST1100

[Sadanorakman]

i had a set of F2 LED bulbs sitting around waiting to go in my ST 1100 ( i have them in the Mighty ST 1300 ) so i decided to put them in my 1500 Wing last summer and order another set for the ST1100

Thanks for the input detdrbuzzard. I guess these have been reliable for you then? Have you put many hours on them do you think?

I had a google, and found some of these on ebay for only £34, so I suppose they may be an option for me if the Osram lamps prove too dim, but I think they should be OK. Just waiting for them to arrive, and frustrated because I want to get the Madstad and lamps done all at the same time!

[detdrbuzzard]

i had a set of F2 LED bulbs sitting around waiting to go in my ST 1100 ( i have them in the Mighty ST 1300 ) so i decided to put them in my 1500 Wing last summer and order another set for the ST1100

Thanks for the input detdrbuzzard. I guess these have been reliable for you then? Have you put many hours on them do you think?

I had a google, and found some of these on ebay for only £34, so I suppose they may be an option for me if the Osram lamps prove too dim, but I think they should be OK. Just waiting for them to arrive, and frustrated because I want to get the Madstad and lamps done all at the same time!
this year will be year #5 with the F2's in the Mighty ST 1300

[eusurp1]

I have a, whaddya call it?--- Ring of fire aound the front tire wrap and a light kit on my saddle bags and was concerned about voltage draw down so I took a look on Ebay and found a great digital Voltmeter, in RED readout, easier to see and a set of rockers for my Ring of Fire and Driving/Foglights. So I knew where my voltages were when I turned on all of the lights. It shocked me to see that the amps pulled my volts below normal charging rate and this was with a brand new alternator (THAT wasn't easy to line up...as I read on these pages and discovered myself!) So I figured the thing to do was to check out the headlight LED replacement man was I glad I did..really. The LED package from Pathfinder for my bike, required no alterations, no retrofits, plug and play. They are WAY brighter...without a footcandle meter don't talk about brightness...its only a guess...but for me...I want to be able to stop in the distance my lights show....otherwise I am staying behind the vehicle in front of me with plenty of distance in between...After installation, my voltage ran up to 13.6 and stayed there and with my retrofitted driving lights I can have it all on and still have output voltage higher than 12.3-5 +/-

Anyway....a good product for me and my 1993 Aspy...what a cool bike....they are being sold locally at ridiculous prices...

minus 15 yesterday...I think I'll just look at the bike for now

Soup's Out!

[Sadanorakman]

After installation, my voltage ran up to 13.6 and stayed there and with my retrofitted driving lights I can have it all on and still have output voltage higher than 12.3-5 +/-

Anyway....a good product for me and my 1993 Aspy...what a cool bike....they are being sold locally at ridiculous prices...

Good to know they had the desired effect on your current draw.

What do you mean re ridiculous prices? ridiculous high, or ridiculous low? Everything gold wing is expensive here in the UK!

[eusurp1]

A 93 1500 for under $3000 US. 109k miles A 2003 with under 90K miles for $6500 US A 96 1500 for $3900 US with 71 K miles...
For a bile that I have ridden all over the East Coast and Canada for the last 6 years...I bought my bike for $2100 because the person selling it did not know about when the voltage drops below 10 volts the brain won't energize the coils...keeping my battery up has made this bike start when I touch the starter button, warm or cold...Iridium plugs...

Stay well on the other side of the pond

[Sadanorakman]

Stay well on the other side of the pond

Thank you. You too! I used to work for a company headquartered out of Keane some years ago. I loved visiting NH!

I bought my bike for $2100 because the person selling it did not know about when the voltage drops below 10 volts the brain won't energize the coils...keeping my battery up has made this bike start when I touch the starter button, warm or cold...Iridium plugs...

Wow, I think you got a steal! Well done. There are two 1988's on ebay here, both about £4K ($4800) although one supposedly has an original 8000 miles! the other one doesn't look so good at 70,000 miles though. £5000 for a nice 1994 SE with 31,000 miles. £5500 for a mint 1998 SE in purple (50,000 miles) (I'm not keen on the colour though). Prices are a lot hhigher over here!

[Ramnight]

I have tried a couple different quality brand LEDs in both high and low beam lights, and have found that the ones made by Electric Connection are by far the best ones available with there light output and beam pattern.