LIGHT ENHANCEMENTS

The dual-headlight design of the ST1300 is very efficient, and I've never had any problems illuminating the road ahead as the beams shinned bright and clear. Another cool feature of the ST is that it has a headlight angle adjuster. It allows you to raise or lower the beam over about 5 degrees. This is handy when the bike is loaded down to let you pick the best angle to shine upon the road.

As for enhancements, there's a couple. First is the Aeroflow headlight protector. This is basically a piece of clear acrylic molded to fit over the headlight enclosure. It is thick and very durable. Aeroflow makes many different covers for many different bikes, and the key is that each cover is designed specific to one bike only. This means that it form-fits the ST's headlight curves perfectly. Also, unless you're standing right up near the bike, it's virtually invisible.

The concept of a headlight cover is simple. A replacement OEM headlight assembly is about $250 with a couple hours of labor involved. The cover is $70 with about 10 minutes of labor involved. Imagine a large rock kicking up at the headlight and you can do the math. The cover attaches with 3M dual-lock (super velcro) and includes clear rubber beads to keep it padded and separated by about 1/8" from the actual headlight assembly. As I just mentioned, installation only took a few minutes, though you shouldn't ride the bike for a day. This will give the adhesive on the back of the dual-lock pads the necessary time to fully cure.



The other light enhancement deals with what are called the "position" lights. These are small lights located up and outside from the actual headlights. They are not very useful from any light-producing standpoint, and are mostly for show. As such, I installed blue LEDs (T13-B6) in the sockets and now they add a nice blue light effect to the sides of the headlights. It's probably illegal to have blue lights there, but hey, it's a blue bike and they accent it nicely. I'll simply keep them there until a cop tells me get rid of them.

They aren't that difficult to replace, but you pretty much have to give the bike a forward enema reaching up into the fairing around the front wheel. Having large hands makes this more difficult. If you have a 10 year old kid handy, have him or her do the manual labor part.



As a side note, LEDs (light emitting diodes) are great for use in every single light on the bike except the headlight. I even expect that to change in the coming years. Today's LEDs are bright, run completely cool, practically never burn out and use only a fraction of electricity compared to normal bulbs. In fact, because LEDs don't waste energy in the form of heat, you could run about one hundred LED lights for the same electricity it would take to run one incandescent bulb.