headlight- high or low beam?

[evanchochrek]

How can you tell if your headlight is wired up to high or low beam?

[Neil E.]

You can look at the reflector with the bike running. Most dual filament headlight bulbs have a shield over the low beam filament. This casts a shadow on part of the reflector. So one half of the reflector has light reflecting, the other half doesn't. On high beam the complete reflector will be reflecting light.

Or have the bulb out of the socket and look to see which filament is lit. Shielded one is low beam. Unshielded is high beam. In most cases the high beam filament is the one closer to the bulb base.

[evanchochrek]

thanks!- now , if it is wired for low beam, how do i go about getting it to operate with high beam on? I would hope its as easy as unplugging 1 wire.......

[Neil E.]

The headlight wires are staked to terminals in the wiring connector that pushes over the bulb tabs. If you look closely at the bulb side of the connector housing, there are tiny slots to get at the release tabs formed into the terminals. A small tool will flex the release tabs and you can pull the terminals out. Just swap over the blue wire one (HI) and the white wire one (LO) and they should click back in place when inserted. Leave the green/yellow ground wire where it is.

So if power is normally going down the white wire to the LO beam filament, once you do the swap, that power will now go to the HI beam filament.

If your bike has basic wiring, it may only have two wires connected. In that case you just move your power wire over to the other terminal location.