Sick of poor motorcycle headlights in the past and especially on my GSXR 1000 I decided to see if it was possible to fit a Xenon lighting kit. The GSXR headlight is pretty useless and improving it would add to an already superb motorbike and satisfy my love of tinkering for a while

Xenon lighting can be thought of in two ways:

• Conventional bulbs filled with Xenon gas. These are 20-30% brighter than halogen bulbs and are a straight replacement for your standard bulbs.    
• HID xenon lighting. "High Intensity Discharge (HID) lighting technology replaces the filament of the light bulb with a capsule of gas. The light is emitted from an arc discharge between two closely spaced electrodes hermetically sealed inside a small quartz glass tubular envelope capsule. To operate, they require ballasts, which supply proper voltage and control current. The amount of light produced is greater than a standard halogen bulb, while consuming less power, and more closely approximating the color temperature of natural daylight." HID lighting is supposed to emit 2 to 3 times more light than a halogen bulb

Selecting which HID XENON kit

Clearly HID lighting is the superior option, though more difficult and expensive to fit.

I did the usual Google search to see if anyone produced a kit specifically for the GSXR 1000 K5 or K6 and the company that most closely matched what I required was AandR motorsport. Click here for their GSXR HID lighting kit

The kit is designed for the GSXR K7 but I was told it wouldn't require a huge amount of modification for it to fit my K5, so I went ahead and ordered it. The kit only does the dip beam. One of the problems with HID lighting is takes four or five seconds for the light to reach full brightness and apparently there is a delay when trying to 're-strike' a bulb, I'm not quite sure how Mercedes etc get around this but this, apparently, makes it not ideal for a main beam.

AandR motorsport are based in the US and I'm in the UK but their communication, site, prices, international shipping rate and the pound's strong value against the dollar meant that all-in it cost about £95. It did take nearly 3 weeks to arrive though.

1 Fuse 2 Conection to battery 3 Connection to bikes dip beam (+) wiring, 4 Bulb (still in protective case)	5 Relay 6 Connection to earth 7 Digital Ballast

One of the things I liked about the AandR kit versus some of the other kits I'd seen, especially the kits on ebay meant for cars, was that it used a relay attached to the standard wiring to switch the lights on but ran the power for the lights through a more heavy duty set of wires that ran direct to the battery. The theory of HID lighting is that it draws a large current for the first few seconds to 'strike' the bulb and after that the power consumption is less than that of a conventional bulb. The GSXRs wiring is (typically for such a track focused and weight conscious machine) pared right down and (apparently) may not take this initial surge of power. Whilst I'm no expert on these things the thought of trying to find and repair a burnt out wire in the GSXRs maze of wires didn't appeal and gave me some reassurance that AandR had put some serious thought into the development of their kit.

As mentioned above HID lighting requires a ballast to 'supply proper voltage and control current'. The ballast is a metal box and its very difficult to tell how big they are from the product shots on most of the retailers websites. AandR offer a standard ballast or a smaller lighter 'digital ballast' for an extra $20. This seemed to me to be $20 well spent and in hindsight (assuming the reliability is OK) was the correct way to go. They also offer a choice of bulb temperatures that range from 4300k (3100 lumens, pure white and very bright) bulbs to 12000k (1800 lumens not as bright and almost purple). I was after better night vision, not a cosmetic enhancement, so went for 4300k option.

The instructions for the kit came in the form of a URL with quite detailed explanation and pictures of what to do. Various parts of the instructions struck me as being an easy solution meant for the typical biker though not the ideal way of doing things...

Customised installation of the HID kit

My main complaints were:

• The ballast and the relay (which although not heavy) are stuck, using a sticky velcro fastener, to the inside of the right fairing panel. While this area should be 95% dry experience has told me that anything stuck to a hot, wet, dirty, vibrating motorcycle will sooner or later fall off.
• They sited the fuse in the front of the fairing near the ballast. this would make it difficult to check if there was aproblem with the lights and the last place someone would look who wasn't familiar with how the kit was fitted, e.g. a mechanic servicing the bike or the next owner neither of who would know it was there.
• The wiring back to the battery is for the positive connection only, the negative is earthed against the frame. They suggest this is connected to the frame where the fairing is bolted on. This would mean every time the fairing panel came off that the cable would need to be re-attached and with the painted frame and the nature of all things a bit grubby not the best place to get a good connection I would have thought. It also seemed a bit amateurish! 
• The instructions said to cable tie (zip tie) the wiring onto the frame along the right side of the bike back to the battery. Firstly this seemed odd as the wiring loom runs along the left side of the K5 and k6 (I'm not sure about the K7 but I expect its the left) and what would happen if I wanted to remove the front fairing? The wiring had no connectors and this again all seemed a bit of a quick fix.

So this is where I veered away from the instructions. I should point out at this point that I am not a professional and have had no training in this area whereas AandR clearly are and have. This is in no way supposed to a criticism of the way the kit is supposed to be fitted, which has to appeal to a lot of riders, most of who would want to get the job finished ASAP and get down the pub. Also I doubt AandR would be very impressed by what I'm saying here as it would totally invalidate the warranty of the kit. It also took a considerable amount of time to get right but ultimately I think it is far more satisfactory.

My solutions to the various problems were:

• Find a new location for the ballast where I could preferably bolt it to something in a more robust, permanent way.
• Run a live and earth cable back to the battery following the existing wiring loom and site the fuse under the rider seat.
• Under the left side panel is a connector where all of the standard wiring that goes to the front fairing can be separated to allow the front fairing to be completely removed. I wanted a connection here for the HID lighting to aid future fairing removal.

I have no idea what sort of current the HID kit actually draws but the kit came with a 25 amp fuse so I made sure all of the additional wiring and connectors were rated above 25amp.

The HID bulb holder

The first challenge was to mount the bulb. The kit is designed for the GSXR K7 which has a rubber boot to seal the bulb compartment. The K5/K6 has a plastic bayonet fit cover with a large O ring. I had to cut the connectors off of the back of this and then shape this to form a 1 inch diameter hole that the kit's sealing grommet would fit into. Because of the position of the old connectors this had to be off-center. it was difficult to get an exact hole due to the complex shape of the cover but the seal has a large lip and, with a generous amount of silicone sealant made a good seal and hid the rough edges of the cut. *I've had a bit of a rethink about this section since writing it and have put some photos of a better method at the bottom

Mounting the HID Ballast and relay

1: bolts mounting the ballast and relay to the top of the air intake tube

After a lot of fiddling about and the complete removal of the front fairing I decided to mount the ballast on top of the left hand air intake tube. Its nice and dry in here and kept cool by being away from the engine and having the airflow through the tube itself. There was just enough room in here for the digital ballast though I'm sure a standard ballast would not fit. I taped it in place and refitted the tube a number of times before it fitted without touching the bodywork, was completely out of sight and I was happy with the position. I bolted it in place with a couple of small stainless dome-headed allen bolts and a couple of rubber encased shake-proof/vibration-reducing nuts. I still used the velcro pad as I thought this would help to cushion any vibration or jolting.

After some more trial and error I found that the relay would also fit here without touching the bodywork if I secured it to the top of the ballast and cut off the relay's mounting bracket. I made up a small aluminium bracket and used this and a couple of cable ties to hold it all together helped by the ridges in the top of the ballast. The cable ties were passed between the two faces of the velcro pad under the ballast to stop them slipping about.

Sorting the wiring

1 Connector between bulb & ballast tucked here 2 Suzuki's standard wiring connector 3 My new connector for the HID kit	1 New cables run down through frame 2 Wires follow wiring loom along frame 3 Then enter the battery compartment	1 Fuse located here (the subframe link plate is removed in this picture)

I then removed the kit's power cables and attached my own, all with soldered connections and heat-shrink seals to stop any water/dirt ingress and support the joints.  I also added a waterproof connector to the new power cables and mounted it next to the connector between the bike's main wiring loom and the electrical components in the front fairing. The connector was a bit more chunky than I expected it to be when I ordered it but it fitted under the side panel OK so I stuck with it. All of the wiring and connectors I ordered online from AES who's UK based online store is excellent and the delivery was quick and cheap. The standard wiring loom from here runs alongside the engine where it gets very hot. I ran the new cables up past the front of the airbox where it is cooler and cabled-tied it to a the wiring loom here and back to the battery compartment where I sited the fuse.

The kit is meant for the K7 which only has one sidelight above the main light and comes with one LED (brighter) sidelight bulb. The GSXR K5 and K6 however have two sidelights in 'wings' to the sides of the main light area meaning when you get the kit you'll be a sidelight bulb short. Either get AandR to send an additional one or find some on ebay, they are only about £6.00

The results

The ballast and relay are completely hidden by the air-intake-tube cover. It's actually hard to believe they are in there) Two thin black cables are just visible beside the bikes existing wiring that runs from the left hand air-intake-tube cover to the area behind the clocks.

So that was it... sounds simple now but it took hours.

I tried to take all sorts of pictures before and after that would hopefully document the improved lighting but because cameras adjust to how much light they see nothing really does it justice. The color of the light is very white and very bright. when you switch it on shining at a wall or something a few metres away its incredible how bright and white it is compared with the standard main beam. It's difficult to tell how much better it is without comparing it back-to-back with a standard bike which I haven't had the opportunity to do, though the lights are clearly better. When you put main beam on now the only place you really see it is right in the distance above where the dip beam is cut off, there's just too much light in the dip beam area for the main beam to penetrate. When you stand away from the bike the light really does grab your attention like the lights on a Mercedes or other xenon equipped car. Hopefully that extra brightness is more attention grabbing and will hopefully get me noticed more by inattentive drivers? Is it worth doing? I suppose it depends on how much you ride at night, how much you like to tinker and how much time and money you've got on your hands. I personally like to feel that my bike is mine and somehow has my personal touches to seperate it from the crowd and improve it however unnoticable to most people those touches are.

*A Better way to do the bulb holder

I had a bit of a rethink recently about the way the cables run into the bulb compartment and have come up with what I think is a much better method. I've never liked the fact that I had to cut a huge hole in the back of the bulb cover for a number of reasons

1. You still have to plug the relay to the bikes wiring loom but the headlight connector on the wiring loom is left flapping about and not very weather tight.
2. It means destroying the bulb cover making it difficult to put back to standard because of a temporary fault (hid bulb, relay, ballast failure etc) on a rideout, or permanently when you sell the bike.
3. Once you cut the connector off of the bulb cover there's nothing to grip to turn and lock it into place, I had to cut a notch in mine so that I had something to push against to turn it.
   

I thought leaving the wiring loom connected as standard and drilling a far smaller hole with a rubber grommet was a far better solution. I could run the relay's connector into the back of the headlight and connect it in there, and could also run the two wires for the bulb through the same small hole. The ideal size of hole (5mm) was however too small to get the bulb connectors through. My original plan was to cut the old connectors off and get some more. They are available from  AES (click here for the product page) and are called AMP superseal 1.5mm and are £2.13+Tax+P&P when I wrote this. However I found out that using a sewing pin pushed past the seals from the back of the plug, you can push out the red locking bits on the plugs, hold down the barbs, and release the contacts from the housings. This allowed them to pass through the new small hole in the bulb cover, reattaching the connector housings when they are through. Because of the different mounting position of my ballast from its intended position the cable to connect the relay to the bikes wiring loom was far too long so I took the opportunity to shorten it attaching a new spade connector with heatshrink insulation. Because of the tightness of the three wires trough the grommet its should be pretty weather tight especially in view of its position under the main connector and behind the speedo.

The new set up is now much neater and will allow me to return the bike to standard far more easily. I also tucked the Suzuki bulb connector into the bulb compartment so that if the HID kit failed somehow I should be able to buy an H7 bulb from the nearest service station connect it up and be back up and running in minutes, getting rid of the worry of the kit failing miles from home on a dark night.

1 The new method:- small hole drilled in bulb cover. 2 The original and instructed method: connector cut off and shaped into a large hole. 3 The pins pulled out of the connector housings so they can be passed through the hole... 4 The connector housings can be reattached once the wires are through the hole

1 The wire to the relay, connected inside the headlight housing. 2 All three wires passing through the small grommet and hole. 3 Bulb put back into protective case to protect it during work, smashing it would be a bit pricey.

1 The ignitor (seperate on the digital ballast) can tuck in neatly here. 2 The bulb cover connected to the wiring loom as standard. 3 The HID wiring passes into the bulb compartment below the connector. 4 The HID bulb connectors back together ready to tuck out of the way.

Below is an area where you can respond to this article. I would really appreciate thoughts, comments, questions and additions to this and any of the other articles on this site. Please feel free to say what you want negative or positive. I would also be interested to see how other people have done the same job so send me links/pictures to  xenon@pwdc.co.uk Anyone interested in reciprical links to this page drop me a line to the same email address