• Welcome, Guest! We hope you enjoy the excellent technical knowledge, event information and discussions that the BMW MOA forum provides. Some forum content will be hidden from you if you remain logged out. If you want to view all content, please click the 'Log in' button above and enter your BMW MOA username and password.

    If you are not an MOA member, why not take the time to join the club, so you can enjoy posting on the forum, the BMW Owners News magazine, and all of the discounts and benefits the BMW MOA offers?

2003 R1150RT lighting upgrade

rogerc60

Member
Over the winter I upgraded the front lighting on my new-to-me 2003 R1150RT. This was prompted by my first (and only) ride home on the bike after dusk, one week after I bought it last November. The headlight was abysmally dim. After doing a little bit of research I discovered it wasn't a problem with just my bike.

I replaced the H7 headlight bulb with one of these: https://www.amazon.com/HIKARI-Conversion-H8-H9-Adjustable/dp/B07GKRKN5B. The back end is small enough that the bulb fits entirely in the headlight housing with the back cover closed, even though it's a snug fit. So far I've had no trouble with the bulb overheating in that confined space. The size, shape, and placement of the LEDs and the thinness of the mounting PCB in the center of the bulb create a light source that pretty closely mimics a standard halogen bulb; the result is a pretty good headlight beam pattern. The bulb is designed to rotate in the mounting flange to provide fine adjustment of the beam pattern.

One of the fog light bulbs was burned out so I decided to replace both of them with these: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01CTMT01G/. I was hoping to gain some conspicuity with yellow lights on the front of the bike. I'm planning to run with the fog lights on all the time.

In order to work properly in the reflector fog light housings these bulbs need to be oriented so that the LEDs are facing left/right; the orienting notches in the bulbs' flanges cause them to be oriented front/back. I cut new notches in the flanges at 90 degrees to the originals using a Dremel tool, after which they fit fine.

Here are the results:
IMG_20190311_194041891_HDR.jpg
IMG_20190311_194109341_HDR.jpg
IMG_20190311_194222834.jpg
IMG_20190311_194253583.jpg
 
Back
Top