Xenon Hid Conversion

Well the bile is laid up for the winter so decided that I would install some ID lights. I had at first considered only the low beam, but after looking at the price of double ballast/bulb kits on the bay I decided to fit to both low and high beam.

Trouble is that most kits on the market are for cars and consist of a couple of ballasts and two bulbs of the same type. On the question of ballasts just make sure they are the ‘slim’ variety and digital. On the CS an H1 and an H3 is required, so I bought the car kit with two H1’s and a couple of spare H3’s at still way below what some outlets were charging for a single ballast single bulb so called motorcycle kit.

Just as an example, my little lot for both main and dip cost me 40 pounds and I have two spare bulbs I can either sell or keep as spares. Outlets were charging 80pounds for the single bulb ‘motorcycle’ kit.

My first concern was where I was going to put all this kit on the CS. A couple of ballasts all the wiring and a couple of starters to boot. So it was a strip down job of the front end to expose the headlight assembly. This is relatively easy as it is all bolt on and in no time you are down to the dash fairing. Once that is removed you can see exactly where to put everthing in the little tray under the instrument cluster and above the lights.

Now disconnect the Battery!
Connection was no problem, just stripped off the rubber grommets and fitted the bulbs in place of the originals and fed the two wires out through the holes in the headlight/sidelight covers.

I then did a dry run of placing the ballasts and starters (had to remove a cable clip to get a flat surface), decided the best option was to fit the ballasts with the outlet wires facing each other and put the starters on top of the ballasts. This was easily done ith some double sided foam tape, the exterior number plate stuff not the white mounting tape which falls off when it gets wet.

It was then a matter of taking the original light feeds and connecting them into the ballasts. A nice hole either side of the metal tray on each side is very convenient. Then the 28K wires back out from the ballasts to the feed wires to the lights coming out through the rubber bulb covers.

At this point I would add a word of caution, make sure you route those wires free of any chaffing points and make sure there is good clearance lock to lock, 28000 volts remember, that is one hell of a belt! Use as many good quality cable ties and self amalgamating tape as you need. to secure.

Check everything once more making sure nothing is snagging and that the output from the ballasts in particular are not going to cause problems.

Connect the battery and test your lights. There may be a little hesitation on start up first time, but after that all should be okay. Just watch those 28KV cables!

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