When you are young you are heavily influenced by your peer group. So it was when I first started driving. As a young man, most of my friends also had cars and many of them were into rallying. Rallying meant modifying your car, of course, and an essential part of cultivating that rally car image was the fitting of a bank of driving lights. Rallies took place at night and on dirt and forest trails (none of this namby-pamby, day-only tarmac stuff that is made for TV). So, as soon as I could afford it, I joined the driving lights club. The picture shows my third car, a Vauxhall Viva, complete with the customary bar of extra lights. The engine had a generator supplying charge to the battery rather than the now-customary alternator and my friends used to laugh that, when I turned all the lights on together, the car would slow down. Oh, I should also add that the headlights were also fitted with quartz halogen bulbs.
The outside set of lights were Cibie Oscars, the ducks guts of driving lights at the time, and the inner set were Hellas. At night time the spread, penetration and intensity of the lights when all running together was mightily impressive. A heavy duty battery was also required as I’m sure you’ve already figured. Obviously with a car fitted with such impressive lighting, every opportunity was taken to drive at night and to attempt to *cough* outshine your mates.
That was 1972, just before I went into the army for my 2 years of National Service. While in the army I discovered motorcycling and it was a “given” that, once I started riding, I would also seek to improve the lighting on my bike/s. Japanese bikes of the day were usually fitted with a 55w/45w incandescent bulb that was effective as far as letting other motorists know that you were there but pretty much useless for anything else.
I have no recollection whatsoever of considering the dangers of riding at night in terms of wandering wildlife and other attendant hazards. We had always driven around at night before, so we continued to do so once we started riding. As noted in previous articles, I would think nothing of getting home from school on a Friday night and then riding three or four hours through the night to visit my brother who lived up in the Hunter Valley. Even today the Putty Road is considered to be a daytime road with only the brave/foolish/constrained attempting it at night (and it’s much safer now than it was then). Back then we did it without a second thought.
So fitting a quartz halogen bulb to the headlight (preferably one with higher output) was considered to be essential. But even that was barely enough (at least bikes had alternators rather than generators which helped considerably). The next step was to fit an auxiliary driving light/s. These days I leave any electronic maintenance on my bike to a qualified mechanic but, back then, I thought nothing of wiring up my own auxiliary lights, relays and associated equipment. Some of the methods used were pretty agricultural and a qualified electrician would have shuddered at some of my early efforts. But the lights worked and certainly provided some extra confidence when attempting those night runs.
In time, motorcycle lights improved but the memories of blasting through the night while peeling paint off the road signs with our driving lights remained. Somehow, it didn’t matter how good the lights were, they could always be a little better. The issue of bikes with a fixed front fairing also became a critical one. On bikes with the light mounted to the forks (old skool), when the bike was cornering, the light tended to be more or less pointed in the direction you were travelling. When the headlight was mounted in a fixed, frame-mounted, fairing, it remained pointing dead straight ahead even when you were going around the corner. Later, BMW solved that problem by inventing a light that followed the bike in the corner and continued pointing through the corner, which was where you were looking, but that came much later.
By the time that I bought my first VFR (2002), I had become used to having the headlight not really pointing where I wanted to turn, but it still niggled. Thankfully, even though the dual lights of the VFR were fixed in the fairing, the technology of motorcycle lighting had improved enormously. Lights now provided a MUCH wider spread of light, illuminating the verges of the road and the apex of the corners with vastly more efficiency than they used to do. Despite now not travelling at night as much as I used to when I was young (with age comes caution), I grew to greatly appreciate the innovation.
BUT, despite all this, the wattage of the bikes was still measly in my opinion. 55w for high beam and 45w for low beam had been the norm in the 1970’s and, even though the bulbs were now halogen and more powerful, I still hankered for more POWER! It was obvious that H4 bulbs could be bought with much higher outputs than that so I tried using them. However, as Jeremy Clarkson says, “There was a problem.” Firstly, the manufacturer’s recommendation was that you don’t use a higher wattage bulb than what was fitted (for whatever reason) and secondly, the standard, automotive H4 bulb doesn’t fit in the headlamp housing of a VFR. Really. Honda, in their infinite wisdom, uses a QH bulb that has a different base flange than the H4 bulb. So, if you try and fit an H4 bulb, the tabs on the bulb do not fit into the recesses in the housing. You CAN make it fit but the bulb sits crookeldy in the housing and the spread of light is compromised as a result.
Honda OEM bulbs cost about $14.95 each. An automotive H4 bulb costs about half of that, grrr. Fortunately, there is always someone with a solution and, in this case, I found it through the local VFR forum. A company in Melbourne (called Motorcycle Cruise Controls) makes a CNC-cut aluminium ring that fits over a normal H4 bulb and adapts it to fit in the VFR housing. It requires that the two smaller tabs on the H4 bulb be removed but then it fits straight in.
I have been using them for a number of years and they are brilliant. I can use the (much) cheaper H4 bulb WITH a higher wattage and the beam is set exactly as it would be with the OEM bulb. I can supply contact details if anyone requires.
Of course, the 800 has BRILLIANT headlights even though I haven’t ridden much in the dark yet, so I have the feeling that I may not require the wheeze with this bike.
On another subject altogether I have been asked to provide some assistance to Damian Cudlin and his new venture, MotoStars. The group is graduating from providing practice days on go-kart tracks in NSW to running race meetings and Round 1 of the championship will be held at the local Kembla Grange G0-kart track on Sunday 23rd of this month. Anything that can be done to encourage youngsters getting into the sport is a good thing in my book so I am happy to do so. If you’re around Wollongong on the weekend, drop in and say Hi.
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