Legit universal LED Motorcycle headlight?

eggsalad

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Obvious answer is to put one of the known-quality 5 3/4" LED headlights into a universal bucket.

Are they any other legitimate choices? The 5 3/4" form factor is a fair bit larger that what would be good from an aesthetic standpoint.
 

Alaric Darconville

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Obvious answer is to put one of the known-quality 5 3/4" LED headlights into a universal bucket.
Might we have mentioned them before in the many threads about motorcycle headlamps?

J.W. Speaker is what you should be looking at. They have a range of adaptive and non-adaptive 5 3/4" motorcycle headlamps.
 

eggsalad

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I hadn't looked at their website in a bit. Seems they have a 4.5" unit now, p/n 0551191 (8415 Series). Is it horrible? Demonstrably worse than the 5.75?
 

Alaric Darconville

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The upshot is that though the smaller lamp would be a compliant unit, and certainly would be better than most other motorcycle headlamps of that small size, the larger lamp will still be better.

I wouldn't say the smaller one is "worse", worse means that it's to an even greater degree a bad lamp as the first one (which neither one is bad)-- rather that the 5.75" lamp is just that much *better*. Obviously where the there is no possible way to use the 5.75" lamp and you MUST use the 4.5", get the JW Speaker and move on, but between the three sizes (remember, there's also a 7" round lamp, and if it were at all possible to use it, I'd use it) the larger lamp of the same 'family' will be better. This doesn't mean that between ANY three lamps, the largest will be the best, but if the lamps are of the same "family" generally speaking the larger ones are better. However, taking a small bad lamp and making it larger just means that your bad lamp is larger.
 
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eggsalad

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Well, this project involves a bike that can't go fast. I've purchased a crashed Vespa 150ET4, and am rebuilding it into what's commonly called a "naked bike". Since it can't probably exceed 45mph, I have no worries about "outdriving" the headlight.

Also, it's cheap enough at $80 that if I hate it I can go with something bigger from JW.
 
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