O' Say Can You See??

I just bought a 06'

 

I like to set my lights by "the book", then crank them up a RCH.... just to get a little more out of the low beam....YMMV I havent had to many people "flash" me for having my high beams on

 

whaaaa? are you serious? these bikes have better lighting than anything this side of a baseball stadium...:crazy:

you either gotta get that bike checked out or your eyes checked up on...
anyways congrats on the bike and hope you get it worked out.:thumbsup:

 

They have to be aimed too low if they aren't fogged up and all lights are working. Another thing you might want to check is the sag in your suspension. If you are too light in the front or too high in the rear this will make them point down more as well. Set your suspension, go out to a country road with a screwdriver, and aim your lights up some.

Mine light up so well that I have moved HID's down on my list of things to do. They are almost on par with my dad's harley with dual HID's and running lights as well. Counting via the "one-onethousand--two-onethousand" method I have six seconds of good light at 70 MPH on low beams and ten seconds with the brights on. Nobody ever complains about my aiming and I regularly use brights with oncomming traffic on a four lane divided highway.

If you feel you still don't have enough light after aiming them up, then you might want to consider HID's but you should be able to adjust them to where you need them.

 

huh... ive got my back lowered an inch, and my front is stock... im probably blinding people lol. nice

 

Nah, you would know it pretty quick. I had mine set too high and got lots of people that were flashing their lights at me.... I think they probably shit their pants when I would flash back at them and it got even brighter lol.

The suspension and sag doesn't play a huge role when things are way off. However when you get things close to the sweet spot, very small changes in angle make huge differences, even a few mm in ride height. A half a degree might not seem like a huge change but when you extend that out 200+ feet, it is quite a large change.

 

I have dual HID's with projectors. I ride all the time at night. Can't complain...

 

The easiest way to do it is head out on a lonely road or very early in the morning if you are in the city that way there is little traffic. If your left and right adjustment is good for you then it makes it really easy. Turn your flashers on and head out with a phillips screwdriver. Make some changes and ride a few hundred feet. You will find what works best for you.

When I started I probably had about three seconds of good light or less and it bugged me. I really cranked on it and went the opposite of what I had and was actually lighting up the power lines... talk about some great light way out there though lol. But it only took me a few turns to get it back down to where it was.

If you need to make horizontal adjustments as well then you will have to take off the left and right meter panels to make that adjustment as well with either a 10mm socket or 5mm allen (it uses both). Something you might want to consider is aiming the right headlight further to the right to light up the side of the road. It sounds like you do a lot of night riding like I do myself and you will probably like this. One of my concerns at night is not being able to see out to the side far enough and some animal hiding in that dark spot right along the edge of the road. You can't do it so much with the left as it will blind oncomming traffic, however the right is free and clear of other pedestrians and you can increase your safety with a simple tweak.

I'm sure that I could get a little more out of it but I found the spot that made me happy. It is amazing how many people neglect this adjustment yet dont realize how important it can be. There are many other bikes that need this much much worse than the VFR due to terrible lighting but with the wonderful lighting that we have at our fingertips, we might as well make full use of it and ride safer and more confident when the sun is down.

 

No problem! Honestly I had not considered it either until I started searching information on HIDs and stumbled upon information that talked about how cars are designed with the lights slightly pointed to the right to prevent blinding and then it crossed my mind that I could do this. Unfortunately it was late at night and I forgot all about it until I decided to remove my headlights to polish the lenses.

When putting it back together I started tightening the wrong nut which turned out to actually be the horizontal adjustment and then I remembered I wanted to do it anyway. I was surprised by the difference it made out to the side and that I couldn't notice the loss of light to the left or in the middle so I cranked it out a little bit more. It might sound silly but it really does give me a little more confidence riding at night with the critters.

Topping it all off was that the realignment of everything allowed me to ride at night with my brights turn on going down the highway. The highway I drive on regularly is a four lane divided one (two each way with about 40 ft between them). So long as I dont have someone in front of me I'm good to go with brights and I haven't had anyone flash me that it was bothering them.

Still though, I can't seem to figure out my obsession with wanting more light. My VFR is leaps and bounds beyond what I had with my Shadow, and now that things are aimed properly its 10 times better than what it was when I bought it. My lighting now rivals that of my car (which I am totally satisfied with in every way), however I still find myself wanting to add more on the bike for safety at night. Maybe I need to slow down, maybe I just need to be satisfied with something, or maybe I should just quit my bitching. I absolutely LOVE riding at night but I know the random nature of dumb animals and I fear them worse than I do teenagers texting while driving. I've ran over my share of coons and squirrels and I've narrowly missed a deer or two. I've seen the aftermath of what happens when a two wheeled vehicle meets abrubtly with anything other than a small animal and I don't want to go through that nor do I want my bike to go through it either. I probably will drop in some HID's this winter during my down time/winter cleanup/seasonal upgrades and try to actually be happy with it.