new blog update re: auxilliary lighting

[honkerman]

I spent three hours yesterday doing a half hour project. Feel free to read the blog post and watch the attached video.

http://scootinfool.blogspot.com/2016/04 ... ppens.html

[Mel46]

I have both of our bikes set up so that with the tail box on the lights work, and without the tail box on the wires are protected. The hardest one was the kit that came from GIVI for its box. It uses a magnet of some sort to make the connection when the box is attached, but it will not handle additional lights, if any are attached to the internal lights in the box. Thus, I had to come up with a way to connect the additional lights so that they could be disconnected separately. Luckily, prior to being an engineer, I was an aircraft electrician. I aced logic in college, and graduated no. 1 in aircraft electrical school, so the first thing I learned to do was test before installing. easy enough to do. A 9 volt battery will work to test the lights to make sure they work. To test them on the bike make a set of jumper leads, one black and one red. Make them as long or short as you'd like. You can get little clips for the end from any Radio Shack. Once you know which wire is which on your bike, attach some short extensions to the bike wires...red for hot, black for ground. Once you have assembled the bike again but have not attached the tail box back, if you drilled a small hole in the grab rail cover, you can feed the leads through, attach a quick connect/disconnect to their ends and connect the tail box leads to them as you are attaching the box. From then on it should be easy to remove and attach the tail box with all of its lights.

[honkerman]

Yeah, I knew all that, just got confused, hence the feeling stupid.

See, the LEDs have a white stripe on the hot wire, and the cold wire is completely black. Despite having worked with these LEDs before, I'm thinking white=cold...I blame the long winter.