what you want is a H4 philips motovision headlight bulb

they are very bright but also have a slight orange tint (still road legal), to make you stand out in traffic

i have converted every other bulb apart from the indicators to high intensity LED clusters. they use a tiny amount of power compared to conventional bulbs and (the good quality ones) emit 70%+ more light (confirmed with a light meter)

for a serious upgrade i would swap the whole headlight for a 7" round

do these bike use a relay system for the headlights?  if not im adding some to reduce wasted power going to the bulb to make it brighter.

H-4 Silverstar halogen bulb can be bought at any auto parts store or at Walmart.

Low beam is a noticeable enough improvement, but hi beam is a blast -- lights the road up far enough ahead to ride at speed at night.  Silverstar is good enough on high beam to let you see a trace of color even -- and that is something no motorcycle headlight has ever done for me before.

What about the wattage of the bulbs? What are people using. I hate riding at night being a bit near-sighted. A brighter bulb would help, but I held off because of the increased heat. What is good?

I use silverstar. There 4 levels of the silver stars. The highest (and most expensive) is very bright, very crisp, and carries much much further than stock. I used those for a year and stopped because HI would burn out after a couple months. I was in the habit of driving high beam all day though. Being unsure whether the short life span was because of the bulb or because i ran HI most of the time I stopped both. I went one step down on the silverstar list and stopped running HI all the time. Still way better than stock and I havent had a bulb burn out in the last year.
Now the aftermarket light I had for my Rebel... That thing was a light CANNON. Even low beam lit up everything. High beam was only for pissing people off. Been considering modding another to the savage as a matter of fact.

well with my previous bike, which had no relay for the headlight, there was a 0.5 volt drop between the voltage on the battery terminals and the contacts on the bulb.

To solve this I added 2 relays (one for main + one for dipped beam) connected with thick wires straight off the battery, so the handle bar switch now controlled these relays.

After this there was no voltage drop at all between the terminals on the battery and the terminals on the bulb housing.  

with that bulb, those relays and a classic cibie 'H' beam headlight unit i had a wickedly bright headlight.

when i get the time i will do the same to this bike (cam chain, engine and carb keeping me busy)

i will see if there is any voltage drop between the battery and headlight to see if its worthwhile adding relays

i have twin spotlights fitted at the moment (2x25w bulbs to keep the charging system happy) and will set them up using relays to come on with the parking lights but off with dipped and main beam, to use as day running lights.  

GT61 TURBO ZX14 wrote on 01/31/18 at 19:30:42:


I've been looking at LED replacement bulbs. The problem is that the LED elements need to be in the exact same location when mounted as say a halogen bulbs bright spot would be. If not the reflection pattern is all cattywumpus and can be less effective than a regular type bulb. It's a crap shoot. Check out Youtube for motorcycle LED headlight bulbs and you will find mixed reviews.