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By Howard Halasz • Wing World Technical Contributor(Photo courtesy of Clymer® Repair Manuals)Your GL1000 and GL1100Gold Wings came fromHonda’s factory equippedwith motorcycle sealed beam headlights.If you have a Vetter Windjammerfairing on your Gold Wing,the sealed beam that was installed atVetter’s manufacturing plant was actuallyan automobile sealed beam, althoughit was labeled “MOTORCY-CLE”.You may ask,“So what’s the big difference?”The big difference is the following:When you are riding at night andyour Gold Wing has a motorcyclesealed beam, you switch from lowbeam to high beam.Your high beam isstill focused straight ahead, but higher.When you are riding at night andyour Gold Wing has an automobilesealed beam, you still switch from lowbeam to high beam but your highbeam is no longer focused straightahead. Instead, it is higher and slightly to the left of straight ahead.Figure 1 shows the filament arrangement in a typical sealed beam formotorcycles. Figure 2 shows the filament arrangement in a typicalsealed beam for automobiles.It is better to have both the high and low beams focused at the centerof the line of travel, as the bikewas designed to be.That’s why it maybe well worth it to spend a littleextra money to get either an OEMsealedbeam labeled “Motorcycle”or, better yet, a headlight housingthat uses the newer halogen H4bulbs.The 1975 thru 1977 Gold Wingsare equipped with a reserve lightingunit, otherwise known as an RLU.Pete Boody of Pistol Pete’s GL1000Gold Wing Services (www.oldwings.com)quoted the followingconcerning the use of the H4 halogenheadlights on the 1975 through1977 Gold Wings:“If you have ever opened the sideshelter cover of a 1975, 1976, or1977 GL1000 and noticed that theReserve Lighting Unit has a bulge inthe back of it, it is most likely thecause of the higher resistance of theH4 bulbs that were used back in themid-70s, causing additional heat in the unit. I believe that Honda saw thisand, along with the wiring plus the cost of the unit, did away with it andadded the H4 bulb to the headlight assembly (’78 and up) and eventuallywent to the dual bulbs in the tail light (’79 and up). Unfortunately,they did not add the dual H/L bulbs until 1988, in the GL1500.Those ofLOLOHIGNDHIGNDFILAMENTSIN LINEMOTORCYCLECAROFFSETFILAMENTSFIGURE 1, FILAMENT ARRANGEMENTIN A MOTORCYCLE SEALED BEAMNotice that the high and low beam filaments are in line with each other.FIGURE 2, FILAMENT ARRANGEMENTIN AN AUTOMOBILE SEALED BEAMNotice that the high and low beam filaments are offset from each other, which willcause the high beam to be slightly to the left of center when the low beam is centered.32 Wing World