Driving Light Installation

UPDATE: New fog & driving lights added08/2006 (go to bottom of page)

I believe that no matter where you ride whether commuting or touring, the more visible your bike the better.

One of the things that I think the RT-P is screaming out for is a set of driving lights mounted in the front crash bars where the sirens used to be. Not only are they at a good height, they are well protected.

Depending on your budget there is a ton of driving light options out there. You could go for the expensive PIAA lights or do what I did and go down to my local auto parts chain (for any Kiwi's or Aussies reading this I mean SuperCheap Autos) and pick up a set of generic 12v halogen-type driving lights for not very much.

My bike still has the additional authority switch units on the handlebars so I decided to utilise the three-way switch that used to control the rotating pole light. I wired this so that I could select the operation of the driving lights to be either:

OK, so here goes the actual "how to" bit:

It goes without saying you need to remove the front crash bars and the left and right tupperware (fairing).

I then opened up both authority switch blocks, popped out the three-way switch from the right unit and swapped it with the horn/siren switch in the left unit so it sits next to the headlight switch.

I traced the high beam and low beam power wires and after routing the wires from the switch tapped them onto the relevant wire.

Bike Wiring:    H/beam > Solid white;    L/beam > Solid yellow

Switch Wiring:    H/beam Input > Solid black;    L/beam Input > green/black

The bike's headlight wiring is found in behind the left hand speaker bracket.

I extended the remaining switch wire (green/black) and routed it back to the fuse box under the seat which is where I planned to mount the 30amp relay in the spare hole.

This wire was connected to one side of the activation circuit of the relay. I grounded the other side to the negative terminal of the battery.

Then I made up an eye terminal with two fuses coming from it. This was to provide main power for the lights and also for the air-horns I was going to install.

I then ran two lengths of figure 8 wire of reasonable weight from where the front crash bars attach, back to the relay. I stripped back the black wire and ran both up to the negative terminal of the battery. The red wires I continued on and back to the relay.

To get these wires to the relay within the fuse box I just drilled a 6mm hole through the  left hand side of the fuse box.

Next I connected one of the fuses I had installed to the main supply terminal on the relay.

You are now pretty much ready to button up the bike, reinstall the crash bars and then install and connect the driving lights. It would pay to check each side wiring with a VOM first, that's a lot of messing around to have to remove the tupperware again

Once you have reinstalled the crash bars, bolt on the lights and connect 'em up and you're done.

 UPDATE: 08/2006 - New and improved!

OK, so I learnt my lesson... don't use really cheap fog lights 'cause they don't last long

I also wasn't happy with the current switching arrangement so decided to change that also. A month or so ago I took the bike in for it's safety inspection. The guy instantly picked up that the headlight dipped the wrong way as we drive on the right hand side of the road here and the bike is from the USA. Oddly enough twelve months previously the same place had done the initial inspection on the bike when it came into the country and the headlight issue was not even mentioned! I spoke to a guy who has the same sort of bike here and he found the exact same thing. Sounds like someone at the testing authority needs to get onto the right page with this... anyway.

Having located a suitable replacement headlight I decided to also do a couple of extra jobs while the nose cone was off the bike for the headlight replacement. Find those HERE.

I have to thank Larry N (whose bike pics are in the gallery) for the idea of installing both fog and driving lights.

After I reconnected the OEM light switch I proceeded to rewire things so that the fog lights only work on low beam. I also installed another relayed circuit for the driving lights that only operates on high beam.

The fog lights I used are a pair of Hella Optilux 1102 purchased from Dave at www.rallylights.com

The driving lights I bought second-hand from our New Zealand version of eBay, trademe.co.nz. They are a Narva Compac 100 although the Compac 70's would be a good fit also.

One of the real bonuses of the "P" model are the ready-to-go light mounts. All I had to do was fashion a simple extension plate from 4 x 70mm steel plate and bolt it to the existing mount. You'll see on Larry's bike that he mounted similar lights both up front. I chose to mount the driving light at the back on top and the fog underneath the front.

You'll also see that Larry used a Hella 550 for the driving light rather than the Narva (pic below).

I chose to paint the plates at this point although you could also have them powder coated.

One of the reasons I have been so keen on good lighting on this bike is that she is my daily commute down the local motorway... and there are enough half-asleep cagers on there every morning to make me want to be lit up like the proverbial Christmas tree! I challenge ANY cager to now come up with the old and tired, "duh, I didn't see you" excuse.