04 shadow sabre headlight change??

oldguy said:

Aim the thing 1st... then a Sylvania SilverStar bulb will be fine. My 1100 came with the high beam pointing at the ground less than a hundred ft out.

Find a deserted long, flat straight road, take a helper or get on/off the bike a bunch. With you on the bike ready to ride, aim the high beam bright spot as far down the road as possible without lifting the bright spot off the road, centered in your lane of course...

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swifty2014 said:

There are some good bulbs made by Sylvania. Siverstar, etc.
Or some good LED bulbs that have a good beam not just a white flood light.
Most are an H4 or 9003 bulb but you should look at the number on yours to be sure.

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oldguy said:

Might verify your charging system is up to spec and all connections are good, a weak charging system or poor connections can cost you 20% or more of the potential brightness. Guy on the Versys forum recently got a light meter, rewired his with relays and heavier gauge wire, got a 36% boost in lumen output. used the oem high and low beam wires to control the relays, ran heavier wire from the battery through fuses and the relays to the lights. I'd expect it to somewhat shorten bulb life. My experience with the 80w/100w bulbs was dismal, they drew more current than the oem wire could handle and were dimmer than the oem bulb. Probably be ok with heavier gauge wire using relays.

And the maybe not obvious 1st thing to do would be to clean the switch contacts in the start button. see the tech sticky posts, another reason to add relays. Honda ran the headlight through the start button which opens the headlight circuit while cranking to give the starter a bit extra power. A dirty contact there can cause dim lights, as could the dimmer switch contacts,,, Not to mention I think Honda should have used at least 2 wire gauges heavier wire for the headlight.

And I'm tired and babbling again,,,

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D's Spirit said:

I put an LED "plug and play" headlight bulbs in both the Spirit and the Valkyrie awhile back. I measured the difference on the Valkyrie headlight between the halogen bulb and the LED with an incident light meter.

Here's an excerpt from my test...
The Headlight was on high beam for both bulbs and the incident light meter was set 10ft from of the front of the headlight in the middle of the beam. The bike was up on my lift and the front wheel was held steady by a wheel chock.

Halogen Headlight Bulb: 156 foot candles, with a color temp of 2800˚K (about the same as a standard incandescent household bulb)
LED Headlight Bulb: 356 foot candles, with a color temp of 7000˚K (about the same as an overcast day outside)

Simple math yields that the LED is more that 2.28 stops brighter than the halogen bulb. Since one stop of light increase means double the amount of light, the LED is more than 4.5 times brighter than the standard halogen headlight bulb. Not bad for a $30 investment!

That was August 2021. The LED bulbs are still working fine.

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