Any thoughts on adding lights to a motorcycle for night time curvy back road riding?

My Aprilia Shiver and Moto Guzzi Breva 1100 have pretty good stock headlights. I think they use H7/H7 and H7/H9. I bought some Piaa 530 LED fog lights to add to the engine guards on the Guzzi. I got these more to be seen than to see with.

I regularly ride at night on some curvy, 2 lane back roads at a brisk pace. When leaned over in turns, my headlights don't reach far into the turn. There isn't a way to fix that with the stock lights and have them aimed properly for oncoming traffic. So, I need to add some lighting.

I have been thinking of adding 1 or 2 floody lights aimed considerably higher (and maybe slightly outward if 2 lights) than my high beam and wiring them into the high beam circuit. Does this sound reasonable?

Has anyone here found a different solution to this problem?

flip said:

My Aprilia Shiver and Moto Guzzi Breva 1100 have pretty good stock headlights. I think they use H7/H7 and H7/H9. I bought some Piaa 530 LED fog lights to add to the engine guards on the Guzzi. I got these more to be seen than to see with.

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Unfortunately, they do more to wreck your distant night vision than they do to increase your conspicuity. Leave them turned off except in genuine fog conditions (to include genuine fog speeds).

I regularly ride at night on some curvy, 2 lane back roads at a brisk pace. When leaned over in turns, my headlights don't reach far into the turn. There isn't a way to fix that with the stock lights and have them aimed properly for oncoming traffic. So, I need to add some lighting.

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Or you could make your pace less brisk. You know you have serious lighting limitations; you should exercise more caution.
If your bikes used standard 7" or 5.25" round headlamps, or they can be swapped in for the factory lamps, JW Speaker has some adaptive headlamps that eliminate the banked-bike dark spot. Read more about them here.

Thanks for your reply.

That adaptive JW Speaker 8790 series looks like the way to go. But at $800 per light, my budget does not presently support it. When I get my DL650 back on the road, it will be with a pair of HID driving lights for those lonely rural roads. Also, next time I buy headlight bulbs, I'll move from Philips Xtreme Power to Xtreme Vision. But that bike came with two good big headlights, so I can't complain.

Alaric Darconville said:

Or you could make your pace less brisk. You know you have serious lighting limitations; you should exercise more caution.

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What he said. One of the cardinal rules of riding at night is, don't try to outrun your headlights. If you can't see where you're going, slow down until you can.

Well, there is that. Nothing like leaning into a nice long sweeper, and seeing just as you go by them a pair of elk standing alongside the road. You think "that would hurt!"

Hamilton Felix said:

Well, there is that. Nothing like leaning into a nice long sweeper, and seeing just as you go by them a pair of elk standing alongside the road. You think "that would hurt!"

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Been there, done that, got the soiled underwear. :sweat:

Gryffin said:

Been there, done that, got the soiled underwear. :sweat:

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+1