One of the upgrades I made while rebuilding the R100GS after the wreck was to install a pair of High Intensity Discharge (HID) driving lamps. I don't do a lot of riding at night, but when I do it's usually out in the boondocks where there's little traffic and lots of deer. More light makes sense in that situation, and with the recent availability of the HID light systems, and their low current draw, it didn't take long to justify the purchase. I shopped around a bit before coming across MicaTech who sold both a pencil beam and a wider driving beam lamp. MicaTech is now under new ownership and no longer carries the lamps, but Farklemasters carries the pencil beam. These work so well I decided to use a pair of them on the R1200GS when it came time to upgrade the lighting on it. After you get over the price of the lamps themselves (about $300 each) the biggest challenge is where to mount the ballasts, and how to mount the lamps. The R100GS is no exception, as there's already a lot going on under the fuel tank, what with dual ignition coils and the factory relays and regulators. As shown above, my solution to the ballast problem was to use the spot formerly occupied by the factory ignition coil, and substitute in its place an aluminum bracket upon which is mounted the two ballasts and a hand full of relays. The bracket picks up three brackets on the main spine of the frame, and uses a short boss to provide a standoff for the lower mounting point (that's the circular feature in the middle of the photo below).

The hardest part in mounting the ballasts was locating the mounting holes. I got around that one by making up some threaded pins with a ground point on one end that I could use to locate the center of the mounting hole on the bracket.

Working slowly, and marking and drilling one hole at a time, I was able to get pretty good alignment and mount the ballasts very close to each other.

When all the drilling was done I welded on the stand off boss and the cross member that would be used for relay mounting. I also removed the brackets that came with the ballasts, relying on the mounting bolts I provided to keep the ballasts closed.

Next challenge was providing power to the lamps. I planned a number of electrical upgrades to the bike, more than would be convenient with the factory fuse blocks. Aerostich offers a fuse panel from Centech, and I found a place just in front of the battery to mount it.

The unit can accomodate five different circuits and uses standard blade type automotive fuses, the same ones already on the bike. The bracket I made is stainless steel (aluminum would have worked as well if I'd of had some) and uses a pair of standoffs to hang below the hose clamps that mount it to the frame.

The panel uses lugs on each end to attach the main 12 volt and ground leads, and terminal strips along the edges to feed the outside circuits. Most fuses can handle two wires, but the outside pair handle just a single wire.

The only thing I was uncomfortable with was the exposed circuit traces on the bottom panel of the fuse box. I used some brush on electrical tape to build up a thick insulating layer and hopefully avoid future problems.

I'd already moved the oil cooler to a new location behind the front fender which freed up the right side crash guard for mounting the wide beam driving light. All that remainded to do is weld a tab onto the left crash guard for the pencil beam; I could use the old oil cooler mounts on the right side by making up an aluminum adaptor plate for the driving beam.

With the mechanicals out of the way I turned my attention to providing power and switching of the lamps. MicaTech had included a wiring harness for each lamp which served as a good basis. I'd ordered Autoswitches from Aerostich so I could control the pencil beam with the high beam dip switch and the driving beam with the turn signal cancel switch. They mounted via a couple of Velcro tabs onto the relay bracket.

The driving beam was wired as follows: A 12 volt wire was run from the fuse panel to the switched terminal of one of the relays. The other switched relay terminal was wired to the 12 volt supply of the driving light ballast. That lead also powered the Autoswitch. The control coil lead from the relay was connected to the driving signal from the Autoswitch, and the trigger lead from the Autoswitch got connected to the turn signal cancel wire. The other end of the relay control coil, the other driving lamp primary lead, and the remaining Autoswitch lead all were routed to ground.

The pencil beam was wired in a similar way except the trigger signal for the Autoswitch was provided by the high beam dip switch, and an additional relay was used to ensure that the pencil beam would only be on if the high beam was on. This second relay was inserted in series with the wires that drive the primary of the pencil beam ballast, and triggered from the high beam headlight wire. The result is that both the Autoswitch and the high beam must be ON before the pencil beam will shine.