Yamaha YZF-R1 Xenon HID Installation

[Chewy]

Right... so I'll try and make this as idiot proof as possible! In all honesty, if I can do it, I'm sure you can!


So the kits themselves are really easy to plug together... when it says Plug and play, it really is. The bulbs come with 3 sockets attached, and the ballasts come with 3 sockets attached. These plug into each other. 2 of the matching sockets will only plug into their male / female counterpart. The other is much larger.


So the first thing I did was rip out the old bulbs (well took them out carefully) and popped the new bulbs in. Once locked in place, you'll see a rubber bung with the 3 sockets on one side (and some wire) and on the other, the wiring to the bulb and two male connectors. These are placed into the power supply to the old bulb. The male connectors you have are Positive / Negative.  However the old light bulb socket had no indication which was + and -, so when I first put them in it didn't work. I turned off the engine, swapped those two around - and hey presto. We have light. I've shown this in the two photo's below:







You'll need to cut / drill a hole big enough for all the wires to fit through on the back of light cover. The rubber bung is then slid over this whole to make it weather proof (or as good as!). I recommend using the bigger socket (the one I'm holding) as a size guide as to how big you should make the hole... as this will have to pass through it. My holes were messy and not particularly circular (due to lack of decent man tools) so haven't shown them here out of shame!
;)


Once that's all in, the difficult part comes in finding a space for the ballasts. They're bigger than I thought for (yes I know dimensions are on the website - I just didn't pay attention!). See below picture for a rough size. Taken against the seat of the 2004 R1 for perspective:



The instruction guide with the bulbs said "A good place is behind the speedo of the bike". This was the most time consuming part.... removing the fairing. If you know how to do this on your bike, easy. Unfortunately, I didn't - so there was a lot of trial and error. Eventually I got the front panel off and found a nice gap to feed the wires through.



Once through, connect up the ballasts (they'll only fit one way so I can grauntee you cant do this wrong) and then find space. I found on my R1 that I could use the adhesive pads to stick the ballasts against the sides of the headlight units. The rest of the wiring then tucked "neatly" in the gap between them. Cable ties supplied with the kit allowed me to clip wiring in place and to plastic bits on the headlights to keep it tidy and in place.



Once that's done I recommend a quick turn on to make sure it all works when in place. You'll notice that if its the first time that you turn on the new lights that the bulbs start off quite dim, then build up to full brightness in about 10 seconds. I think that's just a first time thing - as following that, they're up to full whack in only a few seconds afterwards.


They are definitely brighter, and look much better! I've attached a couple of photo's below, but like most people say on this site - the photo's don't do it justice!!!

[Fluke]

Thanks for the install guide, very tidy job!

The R1 is one of the few bikes where you have to drill the rear of the housing, but so worth it.

Regards