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Senior Member
 
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| My 95 trident takes a H4 55/60w bulb as stock. About every 6mos. the low beam gives up. Its a Wagner. As long as I was replacing bulbs I upgraded. I now run a Wagner 1210/H4 halogen 100/80w. Its supposed to be an off-road-only bulb. It too burns out the low beam about every 6 mos. The off-road rating sure doesnt mean that it is a tougher bulb. The bulbs cost about $10 a crack. Anybody using similar halogen bulbs that last a dang long time? Is sylvania any better?
nobody rides half as well as they know how.
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Senior Member
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| My current ride, a H-D uses an H-4 bulb (high and low) as have all my other bikes that have "halogen" headlights. My Hondas used to use a bulb every three-four years (not a biggie) my Yamaha kept the bulb intact from day 1 thru the day I sold it. I converted my '76 H-D from that dim thing that everyone used to use to a "halogen", and that bulb burnt out one night in the hills of N.E. Pensylvania. Thank goodness I had the 2 "spotlights". Never made fun of them again. Got home, replaced the bulb the next day. Bought it from a local Pep Boys auto parts store. And, yes...about twice as much as a "standard" (read "dim") bulb. But so what??? My current ride, a '92 H-D....16 years old....42,000 miles....original bulb. Go figure. And, if I remember correctly, Sylvania was the brand. Good stuff. I still buy Sylvania for my car and pickup. I tried "Phillips"....got 4 months then burn out. Back to Sylvania. Having said that..................
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All three of my Suzuki GSs and my '84 wing use the standard 55/60 Watt H4 bulb - only one burned out filament in combined 220,000 miles.
I don't know what's going on with your Triumph and the 55/60.
I can make an educated guess though that with the 100/80 you're blinding oncoming traffic. As a minimum oncoming traffic probably can't see your turn signals during daylight hours because of how bright the headlight is. The off road rating isn't for vibration is because the light is too bright.
John
Isaac Newton is my co-pilot.
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Average Member
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Last Login: 12/31/2008 12:26:41 PM
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Franny, that 100/80 bulb is not approved by the DOT. However, ain't it great seeing EVERYTHING at night?
It's a crapshoot if any other bulbs will give you better life. One thing you can try is use a few rubber washers where the headlight case mounts to the forks or frame. It could be a vibration thing.
Now, let me get this right - is it one down, four up?
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| Ibafran: What you need to do is check the voltage applied to the filiment with the alternator at max output. You could easily have an over-voltage condition causing the burn outs. My old '73 Z1 had that problem. It seems that the factory thought the bikes would not be ridden very much and so they designed the voltage regulators to operate at 15 volts---to keep the battery up. I re-designed the regulator to drop the voltage to 14 volts which caused the ground pin in the molex plug to burn out--had to run a seperate ground wire. I noticed that the next year Kawasaki re-designed the regulator---and had to add the outboard ground wire also...the slightly lower voltage cured the burn-out problem. If it is not a voltage problem--then look for a vibration problem.
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