I wanted to highlight the big single headlight on my old Monster 750 by giving it a halo. There are a few 7-inch "angel eyes" headlamp assemblies on the web, but none would say whether they'd work on the Monster (the vendors seem to be Harley-centric). Anyhow, I found an LED ring with 60  LEDs that seemed to be the right size to fit inside the glass, which I thought would look reasonably continuous (not as solid as a the CCFL rings like BMW cars have) unlike some LED "rings" that only have a 5 or 6 spots of light.

As it turned out this 19cm ring was too big, but I turned out that it still worked if I cut it and bent it together (although a cut killed LEDs in groups of 3). This video describes the process: http://youtu.be/F9iG07xHJw0

The problem then was that the LEDs were very white (6000K colour temperature rating) but my old standard halogen headlight was a yellowy 3200K. The brightest legal bulb I could get was a Narva "Intensity" H4 60/55 bulb, colour rated at 4200K. It's still yellow by comparison to the LEDs, but it is a little better. In the video it looks really white (at the end of the video) but that's more the GoPro not light-balancing like I could do with my iPhone in the earlier bits of video.

Now I need to look into putting something between the LEDs and the glass to diffuse the light to make it look more like a solid ring of light rather than lots of little dots. Anyhow, I hope this helps someone.

Ring of frosted clear vinyl maybe?

+1

I realize this is an old thread, but would you mind sharing how you opened the glass headlamp assembly? I want to retrofit a bixenon projector in mine....

Quote from: ducriderinct on July 18, 2014, 03:26:16 PM
I realize this is an old thread, but would you mind sharing how you opened the glass headlamp assembly? I want to retrofit a bixenon projector in mine....

I think my bike is so old and worn that the seal had completely dried out, so the glass came away from the reflector bowl quite easily. First you need to take the 6-7 metal spring clips out that are holding the bowl and glass into the bezel, then it just lifts out. I just pried the bowl and glass gently and they came apart, but some other videos I've seen get you to put the headlight into a warm oven for a while to soften the seal so that the bowl comes away from the glass more easily.

Oh, and you might have noticed in the video that the Monster was leaning over quite a lot on the side stand. I didn't notice this until some time after I got the bike serviced last. The shop I use has really good mechanics but not a lot of space, and I often see them moving bikes around by pivoting them on the side stand. Unfortunately the Monster side stand is partly bolted off the crank case, and the post has been cracked off. Easy fix? Nooooo. It needs to be welded up, but the alloy is porous and contaminated with oil, so that half of the crank case needs to come off and get soaked clean, then welded. Then I'll have one half of the crank case clean and new, so I might as well take off the other half, and if we've gone this far we might as well give the engine a once over. So, fixing this side stand is going to cost me $3500. Then I'll effectively have a brand new engine making everything else on the bike look bad, so I'd then need to sink another $5500 to get it all cleaned up. I think as it is my bike is worth about $4K. I think fixing the side stand may be over investing.... Lucky it has a centre stand!

new engines can be had from 400-2000$ depending on the year/displacement.  you could then dismantle the old engine and sell those parts separately.