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[Marvelicious]

I've been feeling a little headlight envy for BMW and their adaptive cornering lights. I live in the coast range in Oregon so I have easy access to a lot of nice twisty roads. The trouble is that I'm a bit of a night owl, so I share these roads with Bambi and friends, and it would be nice to see them coming. The headlights are plenty bright, but I'd prefer better vision to the sides. I just ordered some switchback signals, which should help, but I was looking at the headlights and wondering...

You'll have to forgive the bug splatter... those evening rides can be messy. Anyway, there seems to be a place cast into the headlight that looks like it could have been originally intended for another light... has anyone done anything with this? It seems like some smaller led 360 degree white bulbs (perhaps something intended as a backup light) could be added on an extra switch for late night back-road use only, perhaps only active with the high beams, to spare the occasional other traffic.

[Dash]

I noticed these too the last time I had the upper cowl off. I assume they are used for conspicuity lights in non-US markets. I'd be interested to see if anyone stateside has made use of these sockets.

[duccmann]

I posted this question 4 years ago with no response. If ya find anything, please post.

[Dutchy]

Them are our "city lights".

We can right with all lights off

with these 5W bulbs

and with these 5Wbulbss AND the H4/H7

and with high beam on

I sent the harnasses fo Veefer Madness yeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaars ago :-) Little more than a rubber plug/socket

He put in red bulbs as to have "evil eyes".

#5 and #7

The 3/4th/VF gen have one bulb only; I put in a yellow one to match the yeloow bulbs and not have a wet, I mean white spot :-)

They also double up as parking light. We can put the bike on steering lock and this one and a rear bulbs will stay on.

so if you (have to) park on the road in an unlit area, you bike is visible to others

[Marvelicious]

Thanks so much Dutchy. I thought they might have been intended for that, but for some reason it didn't occur to me to just pop up a Euro parts fische.

Hmm, so I order a pair of these, wire it into my harness (I suppose its possible that I may be able to plug it directly into an already existing connector) and pop in a set of these... Sweet.

Edit: ...and ordered! We'll see how they work.

[Dutchy]

Now don't you fit one red and one blue LED and use an alternating relay..... :-)

[adsrox0r]

Don't expect miracles, sidelights are just there for other people to see you by no the other way round. A 5W bulb will hardly project anything whatsoever, I have LED ones in mine but it's merely for aesthetics.

[Egg on Leggs]

Don't expect miracles, sidelights are just there for other people to see you by no the other way round. A 5W bulb will hardly project anything whatsoever, I have LED ones in mine but it's merely for aesthetics.

Same here, a tinge of blue lost in the corner of the light cluster.

[Marvelicious]

The ones I ordered are 250 lumen white bulbs. Hardly earth shaking... about like a decent LED flashlight. If I'm not satisfied with that, I'll just have to get more creative. There are brighter options that will fit that socket. It's considerably less about the brightness and more about the location of the light. Manufacturers are getting better and better about making a nice crisp border to the light field, which is great for oncoming traffic, but not so good for spotting furry friends hidden around blind corners.

[Skids]

I don't think those 2 side lights have any beam patterning, they're just a glare light but being so low powered means they don't blind oncoming traffic.

Put more powerful bulbs in there and.....???

[Marvelicious]

I was referring to the actual headlights with my comment about the light pattern. If these fit how I want, there shouldn't be anything stopping the light from shining on the shoulder. Technically, not exactly legal, but I plan to wire them chained to the brights and with their own switch, so that they will only come on with the brights while their switch is activated. That and the low population density should keep the blinding to a minimum. I do want to avoid having these on when I see other vehicles: stupidly bright headlights are a pet peeve of mine. It's all well and good to see better, but when the guy coming toward you has been blinded by your pain array, you're now in danger of a head-on collision.

[tbzep]

Don't forget that angry red eyes and happy blue eyes are illegal in pretty much every state in the USA.

[Marvelicious]

Just an update for anyone who cares... I put this all together months ago, but I haven't had time to decide if I was satisfied or not.

 

I abandoned the switchback signal lights, since the 06+ wiring doesn't really work with them. I could have modified it all to work, but I decided it wasn't really worth the effort since the light would be shining mostly at the ground when cornering.

 

As for the "city lights", I added them to the harness like I suggested... in parallel with the Hi beams with a second switch to disable them. Verdict? A subtle improvement. You have to drill out the opening in the headlight housing, and then that harness drops right in. The bulbs I ordered at first were just too dim to make any difference (in an interesting bit of serendipity, the original incandescent T10 driving light bulbs in my Scion chose to die just around that time...) so I ordered these instead. Same 3014 SMD LED, but three times as many of them. If I had it to do over again, I'd skip the extra switch and just chain them straight to the brights, since I don't think the difference wound offend anyone further than the bright light by itself. It does fill in especially around the upper left and right corners of the light pattern, which does make a difference when laid over in unlit bends. I'd go for an even more powerful bulb if I can find one, but most of the higher powered LEDs seem designed mostly to project and what this really calls for is a 360° pattern.