Since I bought my R18 I have been itching to try out the adaptive headlight at night time. Last night, after changing out the tranny & final drive lubes, I took my machine out for a ride. It was a particularly dark night, with a half moon that did very little to illuminate the roads or surroundings and there are no street lamps on the wandering country roads where I live.
My first and IMMEDIATE realization was that the headlamp was not well adjusted to throw the beam far enough down the road. In fact, while on high beam, it was showing only that portion of the road that I would expect the low beam to illuminate. The few cars that went past me, heading in the opposite direction obviously were not offended by the high beam as it was. So I went back to the shop and made an adjustment to the headlamp position. And it was dramatically better. On the second ride in the dark, the high beam threw it's light well down the road, yet was still low enough that it was not "wasting" light in the surrounding trees. On low beam, it lite up the road ahead, while clearly being low enough so as not to blind oncoming drivers.
So, back to trying out the high tech adaptive headlight... DANG! I wonder how much of the retail price of the bike was a result of developing and installing such a waste of engineering. I've seen the YouTube videos and the BMW cars seem to benefit well from such technology. But I can just barely see that the adaptive lamp on my R18 does anything at all. As I lean the bike into a curve there is a slight flicker of a change in illumination at the side corresponding to the inside of the curve. And I mean it's just barely discernable as something that happened in the outboard portion of the beam, but any improvement in illumination of the road ahead or to the side would require precision instrumentation to detect. I had high hopes for this new technology to fix the age-old issue that motorcycles have been subject to since two wheeled transportation was invented. As we lean into a turn and the front suspension sags under lateral G forces, the headlamp aims lower and closer and the inside portion of the curve looses illumination. My expensive high-tech light did nothing to fix the problem.
If nothing else, I would expect that the headlamp would be brighter than the incandescent units of the past. Nope. It does put out a WHITE light, as opposed to the yellowish hue that most incandescent lamps produce. But I had better headlights on most of my past motorcycles of the 80s & 90s. An H4 bulb in a well designed lamp is every bit as good and, in my experience, often better than modern LEDs.
I'm a bit disappointed in this because I particularly like night riding and had high hopes that the adaptive headlight would be a boon to turning curves at night. Still, I should stress that it's not terrible. Just that it definitely could be better. So I'm going to rekindle my search for a way to mount passing lamps at each side of the headlamp. I'm not a fan of the small, powerful lamps that are sometimes installed on engine guards and fork legs. They work great, but in my opinion would not look appropriate on my beautiful, retro-look R18.
I love my R18! But not all of it's touted technology is living up to the marketing hype.
My first and IMMEDIATE realization was that the headlamp was not well adjusted to throw the beam far enough down the road. In fact, while on high beam, it was showing only that portion of the road that I would expect the low beam to illuminate. The few cars that went past me, heading in the opposite direction obviously were not offended by the high beam as it was. So I went back to the shop and made an adjustment to the headlamp position. And it was dramatically better. On the second ride in the dark, the high beam threw it's light well down the road, yet was still low enough that it was not "wasting" light in the surrounding trees. On low beam, it lite up the road ahead, while clearly being low enough so as not to blind oncoming drivers.
So, back to trying out the high tech adaptive headlight... DANG! I wonder how much of the retail price of the bike was a result of developing and installing such a waste of engineering. I've seen the YouTube videos and the BMW cars seem to benefit well from such technology. But I can just barely see that the adaptive lamp on my R18 does anything at all. As I lean the bike into a curve there is a slight flicker of a change in illumination at the side corresponding to the inside of the curve. And I mean it's just barely discernable as something that happened in the outboard portion of the beam, but any improvement in illumination of the road ahead or to the side would require precision instrumentation to detect. I had high hopes for this new technology to fix the age-old issue that motorcycles have been subject to since two wheeled transportation was invented. As we lean into a turn and the front suspension sags under lateral G forces, the headlamp aims lower and closer and the inside portion of the curve looses illumination. My expensive high-tech light did nothing to fix the problem.
If nothing else, I would expect that the headlamp would be brighter than the incandescent units of the past. Nope. It does put out a WHITE light, as opposed to the yellowish hue that most incandescent lamps produce. But I had better headlights on most of my past motorcycles of the 80s & 90s. An H4 bulb in a well designed lamp is every bit as good and, in my experience, often better than modern LEDs.
I'm a bit disappointed in this because I particularly like night riding and had high hopes that the adaptive headlight would be a boon to turning curves at night. Still, I should stress that it's not terrible. Just that it definitely could be better. So I'm going to rekindle my search for a way to mount passing lamps at each side of the headlamp. I'm not a fan of the small, powerful lamps that are sometimes installed on engine guards and fork legs. They work great, but in my opinion would not look appropriate on my beautiful, retro-look R18.
I love my R18! But not all of it's touted technology is living up to the marketing hype.
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