Upgraded my mirrors using spacers and added led's

Ok, then. I installed my mirrors a while back, but am just now getting to the write up.


I bought some mirrors with LED’s off of ebay for my 5th gen. The goal was to have a second set of signal lights high up to make the bike more conspicuous to oncoming drivers. The new mirrors are a ttiny bit shorter than the stock mirrors, so I also purchased some delrin spacers to move the mirrors further outboard. The first thing to figure out, was how to get power to the led’s. I removed the stock mirrors and the upper molding from inside the fairing, then drilled a small hole into the fairing, so the power wire could be passed through and connected to the existing indicator light on the lower fairing. The LED's have so little draw that the signal flasher circuit doesn't even notice them hooked up in parallel with the stock signals.




Next I sandwiched up the mirror mount, spacer and gasket and mocked them onto the fairing. I then marked them from the backside, through hole I just made in the fairing. Holding the gasket, spacer and mount together, I drilled through the mark on the gasket and put a drill mark on the delrin spacer. I then grabbed a drill bit one size larger than the hole in the fairing and drilled through the spacer. Here is what everything looked like with the holes drilled and wire pulled through.





I am re-using the stock mirror bases. The one’s that came with the mirrors were plastic. I prefer the stock aluminum mounts, which fit perfectly to the delrin spacers. To make the new mirrors fit the old bases, I sanded down the pivot until it just fit into the base.



The mirrors were ready to mount, but the wires were too short to reach the signal lights. I pushed a heavy pull wire down through the fairing and connected a couple of extension leads with butt connectors. I just used some simple side tap connectors to attach to the stock flasher wires. The delrin spacers were a little too tight to fit, so I opened up ONLY the top hole with a larger drill bit. Once that hole was bigger, the spacer still fit well against the nubs on the fairing bracket. You must carefully pull the wire through the holes as you do your final fit and hold everything flush. Otherwise, you can pinch and damage the wire as you tighten down bolts.



Here is the final product.



It was definitely an adjustment to start using the new mirrors. The view is different because they have a slight tint to them and they are missing a large corner, compared to the stockers. At first I was worried I wouldn't get used to it, but that hasn't been the case. One thing I added as I lived with the mirrors was a couple of stainless washers that were ground smaller so they would fit under the bolt head and not damage the plastic mirror stalk. Overall, I am happy with the upgrade and very happy with the added light from the turn signals.

Jose

 

Awesome................:thumbsup:
I think you should paint the mirrors yellow.:biggrin:

 

Nice write up, thanks for sharing.