Headlight Bulb Smoking

I put about 300km on the bike doing technical trails this weekend. Right at the end of the day the headlight bulb went out, I looked into the housing and I saw smoke. Then I switched to high beam, it turned on then went out and added a bit more smoke... Is this just a common thing when the headlight bulb goes out? Was is shorting out or something? Either way, it really sucked riding 100km on the highway at night with just a headlamp to light the road...

Check your voltage with the bike running. Sounds like your regulator is shot and you're putting too much voltage into the headlight. Modern ECUs are built to handle that but headlights and batteries.... not so much.

Guess I forgot to mention that prior to the headlight bulb breaking, I sunk the bike in a puddle up to the handlebars... Water had filled up the headlight housing, and shorted out the headlight causing the smoke.

I cleaned out the housing, threw in a new H4 bulb and now it works like new!