Warchild made a good call on the light scatter, I didn't notice it until he marked the line on the pics.
Well, I have a right fair bit of experience converting halogen headlights to HID, been doing this for 9 years now. Some conversions are exceptional (CBR1100XX, FJR1300, YZF-R1), yet others are somewhat marginal or otherwise problematic (ST1100, CBR1000F, 'Busa).
When a HID conversion doesn't quite have the dramatic improvement hoped for, the primary culprit is the reflector housing design. Two examples are the high-beam for the FJR1300 and the Hayabusa. When these housings have halogen bulbs, the high beam is quite good. But when I inserted a HID kit in the K8's high beam, the light just goes everywehere. It is all over the place. In fact, the beamcast is so dispersed, I elected to go back to halogen for the high beam only.
My K8's low-beam is HID, and it is considerably better than stock halogen, but the overall "improvement" isn't quite as dramatic as the improvement on the low beam of other's I have done, such as the Blackbird and the R1 (these three - K8, Xx and R1 - all use the H7 for low beam).
The single most critical factor in these conversions is to maintain the exact, same "focal point" as stock halogen. This is done by the positioning of the filament... the HID capsule must EXACTLY match the halogen bulb. (semantics: the HID bulb doesn't have a "filament" per say; it has a salt chamber that ignites when 23,000 volts is applied to it).
Bottom line: the *position* of the two filaments must be exactly the same, or the beamcast will be piss-poor, at best. And sometimes, even when the filaments do line up perfectly, if the design of the reflector housing is truly halogen-specific (as the K8's high beam housing appears to be), you still won't enjoy the massive improvements normally associated with HID technology. It'll be brighter, sure. But as far as putting maximum usable lumens on the roadway exactly where you need them, not all reflector housing are created equal.
Below is an example of what I am referring to by the filament positioning to achieve the correct focal point. The bottom bulb is the stock Philips H9 bulb out of my K8. The top HID capsule is H9-based and as the red line indicates, the two "filaments" line up exactly the same. This is as good as it gets, but sadly enough, the K8's high-beam projector lens/reflector design simply does not lend itself to meaningful HID conversions. Yes, you can do the conversion, and yes, it will be brighter than hell when you look at it. But to my eyes, it just doesn't have a massive improvement over stock as far as
usable light on the roadway. So, I removed the H9-based HID bulb you see below and went back to the H9 halogen. I'll sell this bulb for $35 (delivered) to anyone who wants it. It is a 5000K H9-based HID bulb with maybe 10 hours on it.
