Mounting Hella Micro DE Aux Lights

Placement of your lights, switches and components is as important as wiring them correctly. Proper placement of components can actually make wiring simpler.

Switch Placement

I chose to use the left handgrip as the location to mount my switches. My two main reasons why were:

My righthand is busy on the throttle and brake, the lefthand is free.
The existing light controls are there, my mind knows where to look.

I wanted a bracket that fit within the space and that located the switches in a place where my thumb could easily find it.

I found some on/off switches and some rubber boots for them from Jameco Electronics. I then used some 1" x 1" x 1/8" stainless angle iron to make this switch bracket.

I welded a tab on it so that I could use the mounting bolt on my RAM bracket to hold my switches in place.

Here it is mounted in place. Note how the pushbuttons line up with the flutes, or indentations, on the BMW switch cluster. This allows your thumb to easily find the pushbuttons.

Ballast Location

Mounting the ballasts can be tricky. Touratech's HID light uses the beak subframe to mount it - it sits just inside the lefthand side panel. I couldn't use that as I already have my Mix-It amp there and also I have two to mount. So I made a subframe from 1" x 1" x 1/8" stainless angle to support two ballasts. It mounts to the Best Rest Products light bar at the rear and to the beak bracket at the front. I have since added ABS side panels to it so that it visually blends into the black beak bumper.

Relay Location

Mounting the relays close to your lights allows you to feed them from a single set of wires. You simply need to run power and ground from your fused source to the common terminal on each relay. Then it is a short connection from the relay to the light. My relays are mounted in the lefthand sidepanel via a custom bracket (modified "L") and two Bosch relay bases. [ref: adding a relay also on this Website]

The Final Product

Here's a picture of my bike with the lights mounted. I used Hella Micro DE series lights: HID lights are on top with fog lights mounted below. The righthand side is shown, but the lefthand side has the same lights also. I have the lights wired such that the HIDs may come on only when the high beam is on. The fogs can come on anytime the low beam is on (the low beam is on all the time). These Hella lights are the same series of lights that Touratech uses in their kits.