Friday, June 29, 2012

Let there be light!

A recent bummer was that the original sealed-beam headlight on my P200E died. I decided to go for a PX headlight with replaceable halogen H4 bulb, and I'm very glad that I did! I ordered mine from Motorsport Scooters in San Diego - genuine part for the Vespa PX (except the 2005 model), shipped with the correct bulb

The real beauty is that this upgrade essentially is a direct swap.
What you get: a headlight with a main bulb input, some sort of parking bulb input, and wiring appropriate for the PX.
What you will use: the headlight's main bulb input. Toss the PX wiring and ignore the parking bulb input, unless you want to get all fancy and change the functionality of the scooter.

The PX headlight simply screws in place of the original:
 The screw for locking the vertical "aim" of the headlight uses a different hole on the PX headlight. While it used to go through the hole marked with a red X, now it goes through the more forward hole marked with a green circle:
The nice thing I found was that I could use the same screw from the original bulb... just set the nut aside, borrow some of the old washers for the other hole, and screw it upwards into the new headlight.

Here is a shot of the back of the headlight unit. There's this cool black rubber boot which sits over the bulb. As you can see, the halogen bulb still has the same three prongs sticking off the back. So we can just plug the original wiring onto the halogen bulb and go!
Be careful when installing the bulb not to touch the glass! Oils from your skin on the glass of the halogen bulb will cause it to melt down or even start a fire. Installation is pretty self-explanatory... underneath the rubber boot is a tan plastic ring which twist-locks in place. Twist it counter-clockwise, pull it off, insert bulb, put the ring back on, twist it clockwise, and the bulb is now locked into the unit. Stick the rubber boot back in place and it will look like my picture above.

One thing which is important, of course, is to make sure you plug the correct wires onto the correct terminals of the bulb. I have drawn on the plastic "socket" which the wires fit into before being plugged onto the bulb, "H" for high beam and "L" for low beam:
High beam (green wire) goes on the right prong, Low beam (brown wire) goes on the top. Ground on the left
And that's all there is to it! Plug it in and watch her shine: