5. PHID Ballast Placement |
For many motorcycles, ballast placement far aft, such as under the pillion seat or in the rearmost tailsection, is a good way to keep them away from the hot engine bay area. The drawback, of course, is that wire harnesses for 12v power must run all the way aft to the ballasts, and all output wiring to the lamps must run all the way forward again. This may encourage the user to place the ballast somewhere in the far nose cowling area, assuming sufficient room is available. This is the route I decided to take for installing these in my FJR, but it wasn't easy to find sufficient room. After many hours of investigation, I found what I believe is a good solution.
Headlamp "Shelf":
As a consequence of design, the stock headlight housing has a natural "shelf" above each lamp. The right "shelf" is largely inaccessable do to the layout of the windscreen's electric motor. Not so the left headlamp "shelf", which can be access through the small opening between the instrument panel and the nose cowling steel subframe. Mind you, there isn't a lot of room, but enough to hold both PHID ballasts if there are "stacked" one upon the other, and the rear mounting tabs cut off.
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| {Regarding above photo:) At it's furthest position, the ballasts are 122mm long from the two mounting tabs to the longer of the two power connectors (12v input connector), as seen above.
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| {Regarding above photo:) As one might imagine, there isn't much room to work with under the FJR's nose cowling, and every mm is precious. Indeed, unless you shorten that 122mm overall length by trimming off the two rear mounting tabs, placement above the left headlamp would be a lot more difficult than it needs to be. Since both ballasts will be retain by the use of simple velcro, the tabs are unnecessary and can be safely removed with a dremel.
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| {Regarding above photo:) A large rectangle of "loop" velcro is superglued to the top of the left headlamp "shelf", and an equal-sized rectangle of "hook" velcro is superglued on the bottom of the ballast. A piece of paper is temporarily place atop the "loop" velcro as the ballast is carefully positioned into place. The paper is then withdrawned using a pair of very long needle-nosed pliers. The ballast can then be "mashed" against the shelf, causing the two opposing velcro layers to bond as tightly as possible.
Also note that yet another layer of velcro has been superglued to the TOP of this ballast, this is in preparation to retain the second ballast that will be stacked on top of it.
Also in this photo, the two wire harnesses that are encased in heat-shrink ("1" and "2") are, respectively, the power output to lamp ignitor and 12v power input circuits for the ballast. Wire harnesses "3" encased in NAPA asphalt loom is the 12v hot wire to the Bosch relay controlling the PHID ballasts. #4 wire is from a previously farkle that provides power to the Widder connector.
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| {Regarding above photo:) Perspective:With the windscreen removed, you are now standing just on the right side of the nose of the bike (as you sit on it), looking down through the (opened) upper nose cowling access panel that resides underneath the windscreen. You are looking "down" toward the PHID ballast that now resides on top of the left headlamp "shelf". Blurry item '1' is the electric windscreen motor, item '2' is the velcro superglued onto the top of ballast #1, used to retain ballast #2 that is about to be stacked upon it here in the next photo.
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{Regarding above photo:) Same photo positioning, but now you see ballast #2 stacked upon ballast #1. It is CRITICAL that you fully exercise the electric motor all the way up and down several times, this to ensure the upper ballasts clears the windscreen rails as the windscreen is fully extended/retracted. The clearance is approximately 3/16" of an inch. Very tight quarters, this!!
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| This is page 5 of 6 6) Connecting it all together! Go to PHID Pulldown Menu |
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