Details
Hits: 31604
 

Iridium bulbs for your ZXR!!!

by Robert Burgoyne (robB)

It has come up before on the ZXR world forum, the subject of iridium bulbs. The typical question being, "where can I get them?" The simple answer appears to be you can’t. It’s just a case of living without them while everyone else runs around with nice bluey type headlights that look really cool. Here’s a picture of what they should look like.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The solution! Now, if we look at the picture of an iridium bulb we can see that the tags are set further down. In this picture they aren’t there because I didn’t cut them! I have however, circled where they where in yellow. But, what has been done with this bulb? Well, to get round the problem of them fitting in properly, the two bottom tags have to be cut off! To be honest I didn’t cut them off, a previous owner had, and the bulbs were literally sitting in there crooked!

So a new problem is cutting the tags off without ruining the filament. As I didn’t do this, I can only suppose how it was done. The only few ideas I came up with were:

  • Cutting them off with a hacksaw (possible dodgy for the filament through vibration).
  • Cutting them off with a pair of metal sheers (scissors for metal).
  • Bending the tags till metal fatigue caused them to fall off.
  • A Dremmel tool (as with hacksaw vibration could be a problem).

Obviously if you have a much better idea I suggest you use that, remember I am only supposing here! But when done it should look like this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So, you are now ready to insert your bulbs! Obviously if they are still a little awkward to get in you need to file away some more at that pip. But remember, make sure you are having fun while doing this; any problems/questions just post them on the forum! Your lights will now look like this, enjoy!

 

 

 

  So why don’t they fit? Here is the problem. As can be seem in the picture (below) (or look on your headlight if you don’t believe me) there are three recesses for the bulb tags. Now, the ones for the ZXR are pretty much set at 12 o’clock, 3 o’clock and 9 o’clock, these are circled in red, don’t worry about the blue one, this is explained later. The problem is that the iridium bulbs do not come with the tags in this arrangement. They come with the bottom two tags set further down, so when you go to put your lovely iridium bulbs in they are not going to fit, so you have just wasted some of your hard earned! But do not despair!
   
   
   

Now they are cut off your light should fit straight in shouldn’t it? Nope. There’s still work to be done. If we refer back to the picture with three red circles you’ll see there is also an additional blue circle. This highlights the next problem; with original ZXR bulbs there is a bit missing from the side of the bulb chassis, this is filled with a small pip on the bulb recess, of course you still can’t fit on your iridium bulbs!

The next job is to file away this pip. It is only made of plastic so is filed away easily; it just takes a bit of time and you need to do this to each bulb fitting. An easier way to file this off would be to use (once again) a dremmel tool, this will certainly speed up the process compared to sitting there with a file; believe me! You also need to consider the dust that comes off from filing away, try not to get it in your headlight! You could prevent this by stuffing the hole (ooer!) with a rag. Of course I didn’t do this but as they say hindsight is a wonderful thing! But if you can put the rag in so it’s not in the way then all the better! It will also help if you tip the headlight up so that any dust will just fall straight out, this is slightly awkward but with the rag in as well you are minimising the amount of crap going into the headlight.