I'm not getting very much info on this so I'll try it another way. I have been considering adding the HID+LED Conversion kit to my bike but have heard some negatives on the HID part of things. So, I started looking and reading and discovered that a lot of you are upgrading your bulbs to a brighter bulb...Sylvania and Phillips seem to be the front runners.
There are a lot of long and valuable threads on this topic already (as you have indicated). HID is not a panacea- the beam they produce in the housing designed for H4 is sloppy and poorly defined and DOES increase glare on oncoming traffic. They also have a warmup time, have lots of components to fail, etc. But they do put out more light.
The "higher output" H4 (halogen) bulbs are a little brighter, but nowhere near what the claims make. They are *NOT* "100% brighter" or such rubbish. 10% certainly. 15% maybe. To me, it is still worth it.
I like the idea of upgrading the bulbs to a brighter bulb over the HID conversion so maybe I can get some input on this...what is the best way to upgrade the bulbs (is there anything "special" that has to be done before upgrading)? What bulb do you guys recommend for the main lights?
Nothing special, just pop in the new bulbs, like the Philips extreme series.
Also, can the 2 smaller lights (are the smaller lights referred to as "City Lights"?) in the headlamp be upgraded to LED...if so, what LED are you guys using there?
Yes they can, but I don't recommend it simply because every LED conversion I have seen for them has been DIMMER than the stock... so why bother? I wanted to change them to yellow and much brighter to stand out more and used incandescent because the LED ones were probably 25% dimmer, which was a HUGE bummer. I wish someone would make much much brighter ones (it is certainly possible... just nobody does in that form factor... yet... that I know of). The only legal colors are white and yellow.
One more thing, does anyone know what size bulb is in the headlamp? Anyone know what size bulb is in the 2 smaller lights in the headlamp?
12V 5watt wedge base. It is in none of my manuals but I am fairly certain it is a 2827.