Recommendations for Aux Lighting (G650/F650)

Been looking through the forum and a number of other online resources for info on aux lighting for my new G650GS... so MANY choices from Hella to Tourtech, little $ to $$$$! I'm a little overwhelmed and confused by the options, but definitely finding the OEM lights fairly inadequate once I get off of the city streets and into the hills or backroads.

My parameters include wanting a fog light (very foggy in the SF Bay Area hills!) and a bright driving light for dark unlit/underlit roads. Oh, and I'm not particularly mechanically inclined, so anything that involves creating custom mounts and a more DIY approach is out, even though I realize this would probably be the cheapest route.

One last overall question, which options could be used in traffic without irritating other drivers? I realize that a nice HID spot might be too bright for oncoming cars, but since my experience with them is limited I'm not sure where that line lies.

All input/suggestions welcome... thanks!

Watt challanged

I have a F650 Dakar...be very careful with the size of bulbs you run in a pair of lights. The F's & G's don't have near the extra electrical surplus as the big R's. I have a pair of Hella FF50's mounted on my Dakar and I don't dare run those at low RPM's for very long. The old GPS I have mounted on it is wired directly to the battery. It has a built in volt meter and at anything below 3,800 RPM the volt meter hovers very close to 12.4 volts. Just breaking even.

The FF50's have H-7 bulbs and they don't make bulbs smaller than 50 watts. If I could find 35 watt bulbs I could run them more. So you might want to find lights that take H-3 bulbs, they come in 35 watt.

Watts, the deal

Thanks for the wisdom Nyfty, much appreciated!

I'm now considering the PIAA Cross Country HID lights as I can get a good deal on them and I know they're very bright. Looks like the run at 25W per light, as near as I can tell from the literature. Definitely a bit more expensive FF50s.

Was curious about the Touratech lights (both the Aux Fog light and Xenon)... aside form being outrageously expensive (welcome to the world of BMW toys! ) it seems like their draw would be a bit high for the bike... am I wrong about this?

Thanks Kevin, good info... definitely sounds like it saved your wife some trouble there too! At this point I'm not putting too much strain on my amps as it's warm weather here and I'm not using any heated equipment, GPS, or radio... but as I add items and the weather changes these will be issues, and I might as well address them to begin with.

aux lighting solution

OK, it took quite a while and several attempts, but I finally have some aux lighting on my G650 and wanted to report back in case this is useful info.

After looking at a number of options I was honing in on a pair of PIAA Cross Country HIDs, seemed like a good product which would be excellent for riding on dark night roads, but mounting was a bit of an issue. I prefer not to do a lot of drilling etc... wanted something that would attach onto the bike as is and I don't have a workshop (or good skills) to fabricate my own custom job. Custom mounts are certainly available, but I wasn't really crazy about fork mounts and any solution added another significant cost. Hmm...

In the end I broke down and forked over the money for the Touratech HID and Fog light pair. Wow, great stuff! Leaving aside the high cost (which is indeed a BIG concern, I know), these are very nice pieces. Haven't had a chance to use the Fog light on a really soupy evening yet (soon though, I bet), but the HID is amazing, brighter than many pairs I've seen. The mounts are very nice and fairly adjustable. So far I can certainly recommend this option, but just make sure you start saving for it now!

Thanks again for the suggestions here, very helpful!

Can you post a picture of your new lights on your new bike?

Sorry, should have done that to start with! On the rider's right is a fog light, on the left the HID. It mounts to the same screw positions as the turn signals... handy!



More detailed view of mount. Also nice protection around the outside of light.

are there separate switches to turn one on independently of the other? can you post a pic of the switch gear?

switches

Will do when I post when I have a chance to take some more photos... probably should have done that one too... oh well!

The HID is tied into the hi-beam switch so it goes on/off with hi-beams, and the fog light has a toggle on the left hand bar separate from anything else. You could wire it any number of ways, could have switches for both, but I wanted to keep the number of switches down and tying into the hi-beam seemed to make sense for my usage.

They do look good.

switch pic

Here's a picture of the toggle on the left hand side. This is nice as all lighting is on the left hand and within easy reach... HID on hi-beam, fog light on toggle.

A couple of points.......You use the term "HID". If it is a true HID can it be cycled on and off at will. Most HID lights I've used do not allow this. I had Trailtech HID lights on another bike and once you shut them off, they would take minutes to relight.

Second, when they are illuminated, can you see the front directional lights? Where they are mounted, it would appear they would wash out the directionals.

I have a cheap set of driving lights on my G650X mounted in a similar place and they do indeed wash out the directional lights. But I rarely use them anyways as they will drain my battery in short order.

Here's how mine are mounted:


I've abandoned the whole Aux light thing and I'm replacing the main light with a HID. I did this on my R1150RS and the "difference is like night and day"...(pun intended!) I wrote a whole article about it here under "motorcycles" www.rvbprecision.com

They are Xenon HID lights, and they cycle very quickly to full intensity... without being in front of the bike I can't tell exactly, but I'd say 5 seconds or so. This allows me to flick them off/on for oncoming traffic without losing my visibility edge for very long.

Here's the link to the Touratech site for further info http://www.touratech-usa.com/shop/show.lasso?SKU=040-1504&-session=touratech:62F8C2E618e15362A2Hlk1A9F9EA

I suppose if you were in front of the bike it would be hard to see the left turn signal while the HID aux light is on (only the left is HID, the other is a regular fog light), but I would be dimming them off for oncoming traffic anyway, so probably not an issue. Maybe I'm misunderstanding the question?

I've only had the lights for a couple of weeks now, but they don't seem to be too severe a draw on the battery as near as I can tell. Of course I'm not running anything off the accessory outlet at this point.

I also thought of replacing the main light but thought the idea of aux lights was a nice insurance against losing all lights in one go... unless my battery fails, of course! Will check out your link too, thanks!