Installing A Buell Ulysses Headlight

March 03, 2010

Here is what a new set of Buell Ulyssess headlights look like.

This is what they look like in comparison to the OEM headlights. Tiny little buggers, aren’t they?

With the Suzuki headlights removed, I used some scrap steel that I had on hand, and fabricated a bracket that I welded to the factory fairing structure.

Here are two shots of the Buell headlights temporarily bolted to my motorcycle.

After the Buell headlights were “hung”, I needed to fabricate a way for me to adjust the unit “up”, or “down”. I discovered that a short piece of steel tubing slid nicely into the stock structure.

Out of more scrap steel, I welded up an “adjustment tang” that would attach to the bottom of the headlight assembly, and slide into the steel tube.

Now, I had to fabricate a way to “lock” the adjustment tang into position after I determined the proper height for the beam of the Buell headlights. My plan was to use a bolt as my locking mechanism.

I fit a short length of steel tubing to the longer “adjustment tube”…..

….and welded it to the adjustment tube.

I threaded a 1/4:20 bolt into a 1/4:20 hex nut and clamped the hex nut to the “bolt locking tube”, using my vise.

I welded the hex nut to the locking tube.

I slid the adjustment tube assembly back into the stock fairing bracket to check how it worked. It worked fine!

Next, I removed the stock steel from the motorcycle and welded my adjustment tube to it.

I did have a minor electrical problem with this modification. The Buell headlights were advertised as having H4 bulbs. That would mean that they would “plug-&-Play” with the Strom wiring. Unfortunately, the Buell headlights are for H7 bulbs; different wiring.

The OEM headlights have 3 wires to each bulb.

The Buell lights have two wires for each bulb.

Here is the connector off of the back of the Buell light.

Of interest is, there is a small light bulb between the two main bulbs of the Buell headlights. If you look at the above, “connector” photo, you can see the wiring for that right below my hand, in the back of the headlight assembly.

I had rewiring to do to make this all work!

The Strom headlight bulbs both illuminate on the “Low” setting, and they both illuminate on the “High” setting. The Buell headlights work with only one bulb illuminating on the “Low” setting, and both bulbs illuminating on the “high” setting.

So of course, the first thing I had to do was cut the Buell plug off of its harness, so that I could to begin to identify what wire did what.

I also had to open up the light switch housing on the left handlebar grip.

Using the Buell headlight assembly, laid out on top of a cardboard box, sitting right next my bike, and the stock switch and wiring from the bike, I was able to determine, “what wire did what”, when I flipped from “Low Beam” to “High Beam”.

With that information, I began cutting and soldering the stock wires into the positions that I needed them to be in to make the Buell headlights work. (Believe me, I haven’t a clue as to what I am doing here!!! I NOT an “electrical guy”!)

It was easy enough to identify which were the ground wires on the Buell lights. I soldered them together.

Here is “Low Beam”.

And, here is “High Beam”.

However, the above setup is wrong. I didn’t discover it until I rode the bike at night. The “Low Beam” light on the Buell assembly is the RIGHT headlight and bulb. “High Beam” is the LEFT headlight and bulb + the right headlight. There IS a difference!

———————————————————

Since doing the above work over two years ago, I made some wiring adjustments when I built my front fairing.

Now, that was a lot of fun!

I will share the story of how I built my front fairing at a later date.