A Buying Guide For Motorcycle Lights

Motorcycle lights are one of the most crucial parts of your bike. During a daytime ride, you may not notice its importance. But in a night or extreme weather condition, it is a totally different story.

A clear view of the road and of the other commuters on the street is an important factor in riding a motorcycle. You have to see all of them at all time to avoid accidents. To ensure this, you can install additional lamps, such as fog light, on your bike.

There are several motorcycle lights available in the market today. Basically, driving lights are model specific and installation can vary between brands. Read on to know more about motorcycle lights, its differences and advantages.

Halogen

A halogen light bulb is also known as a tungsten halogen light or even a quartz iodine light. These are incandescent lights that have a small amount of a halogen inside in the form of either asiodine or bromine.

The mixture of halogen gases and tungsten filament create a chemical reaction which redeposits the evaporated tungsten back onto the filament. This process increases the life of the bulm while maintaining the clarity. This also allows halogen lights to operate at higher temperatures and in smaller systems making them a great light for motorcycles.

Halogen lights have long life spans, cheap, effective, and produce high amounts of light with pleasant color temperatures. Its biggest downsides are it could burn out more often and are not so vibration resistant.

This type of lamp can be purchased at retail stores or even at your the local drug store.

LED

A light-emitting diode or LED lamp is a semiconductor light source. LEDs have been used as “accent lighting” in bikes for several years. It is has been proven to be effective as both driving lights and headlights.

LED lights have many advantages over incandescent lights like halogen. This kind of light are smaller in size, and offers longer life and lower energy consumption. These super bright lamps rarely crash and these are also waterproof.

However, it also has some disadvantages. It is expensive than the halogen and require more precise current and heat management than incandescent or halogen lights.

H.I.D

High-intensity discharge lamps are electrical gas-discharge lights which produce light by means of an electric arc between tungsten electrodes inside a translucent fused quartz or fused alumina arc tube. This tube is filled with both gas and metal salts. When the arc started, it heats up and evaporates the metal salts which in turn form a plasma. This increases the intensity of light produced by the arc and reduces its power consumption.

HID lamps have more visible light per unit of electric power consumed than fluorescent and incandescent lamps since a greater proportion of their radiation is visible light in contrast to heat.

The main advantage of HID lamps is that it is the brightest of all, while its downside is that it is an expensive driving light. The price is similar in most brands.