Pre-ride check/ tail light

[docc]

Looking to take the Sport on a little local weekend romp. Maybe 500 miles, so not like Gino looping to Italy through Croatia. And absolutely no prospect of a "Fiona" in the mix.

 

Only 4,000 miles since the last tune, and she's running an absolute champ, so no worries there. Battery tested 12.7v which might sound great, but is actually about 85%, so started the discharge-charge cycle last last night using the dedicated AGM charger. The battery terminals had that light chalky look, so broke all the connections loose, sprayed with electronics cleaner, then applied a coat of Kiwi_Roy's Miracle Elixir (Vaseline) and heated it gently with a heat gen before tightening them all back down. I have extra connections since I moved most of the terminal ends to distribution blocks. Unseated and re-seated all of the fuses and relays.

 

So, no turn signals or tail light.   These are on entirely different circuits.

 

Turn signals came back by cleaning and re-seating the flasher.

 

But the tail light? All the other functions on that circuit are good (tag light, "city" light, instrument illumination), so I figure it's my flinky old tail light assembly. I've had to bend the contacts out mightily in the past to get contact (on other V11s, too), but couldn't get reliable contact to the bulb. So, time to install the NOS tail light I've had in the V11 Rescue Cabinet.

 

The fixture itself comes off pretty easily, but the wiring is best accessed with the tail section removed.

 

What good is ride if you don't take your bike apart the night before?

[czakky]

You have to be close to 100k miles?...

What does a guy keep in his "V11 rescue cabinet" anyway? I know after roughly 20k miles my rescue cabinet has gotten near respectable.

[docc]

99,186 . . . looking more and more like the Spine Raid will be the 100,000 mile voyage. Seems like such a big deal for us Yanks who used to have to bury our cars at a hundred k.

 

New tail light took under an hour to install. Probably a fifteen minute job for a sane, undistracted person.

 

New tail light appears "improved" (let's hope . . . I forgot how many *repairs* I had done to my original )

[docc]

Headed out in the morning!

[footgoose]

what's the red wire for docc?

[Kiwi_Roy]

Those tail lamp contacts are awful, just pushing the bulb in far enough to get past the hump in the bayonet bends the brass away from the lamp, remind me of the Prince of Darkness fittings on my Lario, I ended up soldering those to the lamps.
 

[Scud]

All I can see is a map with twisty roads.... 

[Gino Rondelli]

Sh*t never checked my tail light but then again my V11 is almost new compared to the impressive almost 100k miles Docc! But then again Fiona is my tail light checker I suppose (although when I'm on the Norton she is the "something's fallen off / smoke out of the exhaust/ it stinks of petrol /oil checker) 

[docc]

Red wire is power to the "auxiliary" LED set (tail light/brake light/ turnsignals) I added (its tail light visible at the bottom of the photo just above the license plate) precisely because I've had lamp failures on rides before and often have other riders following me (four others this time).

 

The turn signal flasher didn't last ten miles; had to divert to a parts supplier before we met for breakfast.

 

Otherwise, the recent oppressive heat lifted and gave us a fabulous ride. The climbs to this "plateau" are all about a thousand feet and we rode twelve in all for an accumulation of over twelve thousand feet of elevation change.  What a delight!

 

The only other things that I had to do was add a couple hundred milliliters of oil, one or two PSI in the tires, and wiggle all my load-out into the Tekno panniers (impressive kit, they are!). And that before expanding them to get a half case of good ale to the cabin in the woods.

 

This Sport is resting on 99,708 miles now.

Fabulous motorcycle, the V11!