Weak low beam?!?!

Hey folks:

Noticed something weird tonight: my low beam seems very weak. Just not bright at all, I can stare right at it no problem. The high beam seems much, much brighter; way brighter than the ~10% difference in wattage would suggest. Anyone heard of this before? Does it sound like I should swap in a new lamp, or do I have to dig through the harness?

Thanks,
-Kit

[pendraig]

Kit; It could be that the low-beam filiments are growing "weak". After all, that's what you've got glowing most of the time.
But, did you move your point of view vertically while you were gazing into the lamp? The bulb is built so that, on low beam, it casts most of the light into the upper hemisphere of the reflector which then reflects the light low (onto the surface of the road). The high beam casts much more light onto the lower hemisphere of the reflector and therefore comes out through the lens much higher (to illuminate objects further afield). If you're standing in front of your bike the high beam will seem scads brighter. you need to squat, sit or lie in front of the bike to see how bright it really is. A better test is to pull the bike up with a blank concrete or gypsum-board wall in front of you and flip your light from high to low. Then you will see both the brilliance and the point-of-aim of the light.

I looked at it, moved my head around, then had my girlfriend sanity-check me on it. She agreed that there was light, but very little of it.

Today, I took my spare bulb out & took the headlight assembly completely apart. Then I looke dat the Haynes manual & realized 2 things: first, there was no need to take the pesky thing so far apart, & second, the light I was seeing was from the sidelight bulb. The low-beam filament in the H4 bulb was in pieces when I removed it. I've never heard of a sidelight before, but they're apparently standard equipment on these bikes...

The new bulb works, & I'm off to find out whether it's aimed correctly.

Cheers,
-Kit