The Hack Strikes Again
 

From some other work I've done on it, I gathered that a previous owner of my Ninja was a hack, most likely belonging to the order of Teuthida. Today I finally decided to investigate why the high beam on the headlight doesn't work. First off, I found only two wires going to the headlight instead of the three called for in the factory wiring diagram. Tracing these I found a box about the size of a cigarette pack that wasn't on the diagram and which was zip tied on. After a bit of messing around, I determined that The Hack decided it would be a good idea to remove the original H4 halogen bulb and installed a (most likely cheaply made Chinese) not exactly legal HID "conversion kit" that puts an HID bulb inside the halogen reflector.

Now I get to figure out what it's going to take to convert it back to the proper configuration, or just not do much night riding and let it go until I switch bikes in a year or two. Stupid cephalopod PO:mad:

Mail him back the HID kit with the controller open. Those capacitors hold a few hundred volts and probably would take a few days to discharge. BZZZT!

The 'cigarette pack' as you have surmised is the HID ignition controller, which you will want to remove.

Then, you must find what the DPO (Dreaded Previous Owner) did with the original 3 wires Lo, Hi and Common. DPO probably spliced Lo and Common to the ignition box, so you need to find that missing 3rd wire. Of course, you probably have figured out all of this.

Once you have found the 3 wires, you need a 'factory' headlight socket, either new or from the local boneyard and some good crimp-on wire splices.

Personally, I'd solder the wires back together and heat-shrink the wounds. No sense in having to repair the repair down the road... :rolleyes:

Good news: The hack job was done in such a lazy manner that all I need to do to fix it is buy a replacement bulb, remove the offending added parts, yank the two shoddily installed extra wires out of the original connector to the headlight bulb, and plug it in as designed. Parts should run about $20.

I know the mod wasn't done by the guy I bought the bike from, since he didn't do anything to the bike except ride it and put gas in it. It was someone before him.