Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Fender Project Completed

I finally finished up this project and I think it turned out pretty clean.

Here's a shot of the LED's and plate installed.




I siliconed the back of the circuit board to keep everything protected from the elements.



Drilled a few holes in the undertail to route the wiring harness through and to bolt the plate in place.


Here it is fully installed, looks pretty sweet huh!



Yes, they really do work.


Here's a before and after pic.


Overall the project went very smooth with no glitches.

Monday, October 16, 2006

Fender Eliminator Project

Time to clean up the rear end by getting rid of the ugly fender/license plate holder/blinker assembly!

Here is the stock fender assembly.



I had to remove the seat, side plates, bolts and clips that hold the bodywork on. Then it looked something like this.

Now I unhooked the wiring harnesses for the blinkers and license plate light and removed the fender. Doesn't it look much cleaner!!

I am currently fabricating a license plate holder /blinker assembly that will mount up flush to the undertail.

Next I went to Radio Shack and bought a small circuit board and 12 Red LED's (6 for the Left Blinker and 6 for the Right).

Circuit board and LED's

My high-end custom soldering fixture

All soldered up

Then I soldered on the wiring harness from the stock blinkers.

I hooked them up last night and tested them, they work like a charm and are BRIGHT! Hopefully today the mounting plate will get sheared and punched so I can get it primed, painted and ready for the LED's to be installed.

Front Blinker Project

The front "parking lights" on the bike are pretty much a useless feature. Most people usually just disable this so they don't drain their battery if they accidently turn their key past off to the "Park" mode. Since I wanted to get rid of my ugly front blinkers I decided to change the parking lights into my new blinkers.

Required Items

  • 194 NA amber lights from any auto parts store
  • Heat shrink
  • Soldering iron

Stock Blinkers


Stock Parking Bulbs



The first thing I did was to remove the stock blinkers.
After that I removed the access plates for the front light assembly, pull out the stock bulbs and put in the new amber ones. After that I cut off the wiring harness connector for the blinker and the parking light.





Next I soldered the wires together, heat shrinked each individual wire and then heat shrinked both of them for some added protection.



Plug the light socket back into place, put the cover plates back on and it's done, takes about 20 minutes and looks very clean. The only thing I have to do is cut some small pieces of carbon fiber to blank off where the stock blinkers went through the fairing.