Hella FF50 Driving lights on a Honda NT650 Hawk GT

Based on a thread on a mailing list I got a set of Hella FF50 driving lights to see how good they really are. Because I'm that sort, I took pictures.

All the lights including the FF50 and the OEM headlight are wired from the battery using 14 gauge wire so there's be very little resistance from crappy OEM wiring.

The FF50 comes in pairs, but there's only one hooked up for these photos, mostly because I only bothered to make one bracket. The FF50 comes in two styles, a "driving" style, and a "fog" style. This is the "driving" style.

Here are some comparison pictures:

a straight road

a road with a bend

My subjective experience is that these pictures don't show how bright the FF50 is, or how useful it is.

It's not perfect though. I'd like it to be somewhat broader and taller, I found that I wanted to see farther around corners than this would allow. There's no question that this is an suplementary lamp, and not a replacement for either the high or low beam.

I've got a set of the FF50 fog lights coming in the mail to see if this will fix some of the "going around corners" problem. I'm thinking I can aim the driving beam higher because the fog will cover more of the corners. Maybe I should just aim the driving beam higher anyway.

I've also got some Hella Optilux 2020 lights coming, which have the advantage that each lamp has both a driving and a fog lens. I like the idea of having dual lamps since I think it'll make the bike more visible and easier to identify.