Well it's cool I got it all in there as the new slim-line ballast has about 3 inches of lead. Holy f@ck! is it bright. I like you Paul, went with the 35w and I'm glad I did as the 55w would have been total overkill. The low beam is brighter than my high which I kept as it was perfectly fine and I wanted the ability to flash people for passing, signaling, etc. The beauty of the Bandit 1200 2G is it already has projectors and blockers so you're not blinding anyone. In the spring I may artificially aim them even lower than I have now which is pretty low as I live in a major city to be on the safe side. I turned them on in an alley and it literally lit up the entire alley. These headlights don't f#ck around!
All for less cost than those stupid fake blue BS bulbs they try to pass off as HID in the store which is actually
LESS light than a stock ho hum Halogen. I got the 4500K which is just sort of a standard white as it has the most usable light and I don't really want to attract attention or look like a squid with blue or purple or some other silly colour than throws off again LESS light than the standard 4500K. Also these are perfectly legal in Canada as long as you don't have higher than 8000K and have blockers.
You really start to realize how crap the stock low beam is after installing these puppies. What I should have done is paid the extra $7 so I had a pair instead of just one for spares, even with the lifetime warranty so I don't have to be down while waiting for replacements(I did leave the old bulb under the seat just in case). I would strongly
NOT recommend replacing the high beam as this kit takes 4 secs to achieve 90% of the max lumens and around 25 secs to achieve 100% so if you were trying to flash someone to pass you would just get sort of a blip instead of a nice beam. Maybe if you lived in Alaska or something where you never ever need to flash traffic or whatever but flashing with HID's quickly is not recommended as it reduces the life of the ballast and/or bulb.
Which brings another point to the table...the so called "hot striking" issue. What this is is quickly turning on and off the HID's which supposedly reduces bulb/ballast life. If you're totally paranoid you can turn the bike on with the starter button held in which will kill the low beam and just pull the clutch in to start the bike. From what I read the worst "damage" occurs when you quickly flash on and off before the bulb is almost fully warmed up(4 secs) so if you "screw up" and turn the ignition on just wait for the 4 secs whereby you have 90% of the light and the resistance needed to to keep the light going is greatly reduced to minimize this damage. Allegedly, the digital ballasts we're using are less susceptible to this sort of damage as it can compensate much faster for reduced resistance necessary to keep the bulb firing, and have more consistent power delivery. Also with the lower wattage, this really may be a non-issue. So even if you do absolutely nothing special you may only reduce the life of the bulb or ballast by 6 months or something over the lifetime of the unit. Considering it has a lifetime warranty I wouldn't even care.
You can buy a time delay relay for amount of the entire unit ($50) but for that price you could replace the whole setup if you wanted. I would suggest anyone who would want this to buy a pair for an extra $7 instead of just one unit so you have a pair and can replace what you need while waiting until the busted parts get replaced under warranty.
I bought the DDM slim line digital ballast here:
http://www.ddmtuning.com/Product-Categories/Motorcycle-HID-Kits-LightingFor the 2nd Generation Bandit low beams are the 9006 bulb.
Here is a good video showing the difference between the analog ballast and the digital ballasts we have. As you can see with the digital ballast the Amperage is very very stable. You can see that after the initial striking power which is required to ignite the bulb it settles down very quickly to just enough to keep it going. Also you can see once the bulb is warmed up and shut off turning it back on with the slimline digital ballast it keeps the same amount of power to keep it running instead of going into an bulb ignition, high amp cycle so it prolongs bulb/ballast life unlike the analog. The only advantage I can see with the analog is it has a built in igniter instead of an external one(if you want to call it an advantage):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6d06X3BCq8
Topic: Replacement headlight bulbs that don't suck? (Read 9835 times)