Alrighty folks,
Here's the rundown of last night's shenanigans. Overall I would say a lot of things went right, and it feels like a big success, but it still isn't an ideal solution.
So here goes:
Another shot of the headlight with my Superbright LED H4 and its big long heat sink sticking out the back.
A pic of the bulb hole.
I realized that I could trim just a little bit off the circular part of (what I'm calling the) H4 mounting plate on the bulb. This was a fantastic eureka. With just this little bit of modfication to the bulb I can then finagle it down inside the headlight hole, but if this crazy experiment doesn't work, I am still able to use the normal 3 mounting tabs, so I haven't destroyed my $40 bulb.
A shot showing both sides trimmed off. This is all the bulb modification I did.
Dry-fitting it. Looks like it'll work, but because of those small metal tabs sticking up, the bulb didn't marry up that snug with the hole.
So what I did is bent those few metal tabs down with some needlenose pliers. I also then put a few small pieces of gorilla tape against the contact points on the bulb hole edges. The thought here was that the tape would make a thin pad which could possibly help prevent the bulb from squirreling itself free, or spinning, etc. I initialy used a metal wire of about 1.5mm diameter to try and secure the bulb, but it was too bulky to work with. So I opted for this green Christmas Wreath wire which I looped over top a number of times to basically tie it on. The bulb can wiggle a tiny tiny bit, but it is not noticeable at all when riding.
So, success right? Well, we'll see...
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As I believe Adrian warned, the beam pattern is now totally sucky... with moving the bulb forward (probably 25mm?) it screws with the geometry (trigonometry?) (physics?) I dunno... but there's a big dark spot right in front, where as a true night rider you would least want it to be. However...
When I flip to hi-beam, it is much brighter, and covers a ton more of the surrounding area, but there is still a glaring (or lack there-of) dark spot right in the middle. Plus, having the hi-beam on like this will dazzle the heck out of oncoming drivers, and is not safe in that regard.
So back to the drawing board. But luckily, I also was planning on mounting up those 6-LED flood light clusters to my handlebars. Here's a pic of that:
Low-light, hard to see shot of my Ennie with one of the LED clusters mounted (I have yet to mount the second one).
Here's a pic of the hi-beam, without the flood cluster. As you can see, you don't really need headlights to drive in the city at night. I had to ride all around until I found that dark industrial area for my previous photos.
And here's a photo of the hi-beam with the one flood cluster on. It's a pretty diffused beam which does not project strongly in the straigh-ahead direction, but it does help. Notice the garage door and the front of that red car as compared to my previous photo.
Synopsis:
Do I feel like my experiment was a success? Yes.
Do I feel this suits my purposes of increasing my own visibility to other drivers, specifically on the highway during rush-hour? Yes.
Is this an ideal solution? No.
Is this useful for night-riding in urban areas? Yes.
Is this useful for night riding on back roads, where things are actually dark? No.
Is this useful for daytime riding on back roads, so other cards will notice you? Yes. But I would still dim to my low-beam for oncoming cars (that will also black-out my flood LEDs).
Where do we go from here?
I have yet to mount the second LED flood cluster. That will help as well for my central dark spot, but I still think the center part of my beam will be dimmer than a normal bulb with a proper bulb position.
Also, I think I moved the bulb farther forward than it really needed to go in order to clear the speedo cable. My theory is the farther back I can push it (closer to stock H4 positioning) the better my beam pattern will improve. I am thinking I may cut a big thick washer shaped piece out of some dense closed cell foam I have laying around, which I'll put between the headlight bulb hole and the heat sink. That will push the bulb back a bit, hopefully improving my beam pattern, and will also have some give in case it crams right up against the speedo cable.
So there we have it. We have learned some and the mad science continues.