1 If our new rear lights...
1 If our new rear lights are this bright during the day, imagine how bright they'll be at night.
With all of that black paint, our long term BMC needed a way to be seen easier by other drivers. It's true, we could ride it naked, but you don't want to see that and we don't want that drafty feeling on the freeway. A better alternative is brighter lighting, and since Radiantz makes some of the brightest LED gear around, we took the BMC down to its Orange, California, shop for a full lighting makeover. It included a Firestar Nova Tri-bar headlight and Radiantz's own Tokerz turn signals and billet cat-eye sidemount license plate/taillight combination.
Why is LED lighting better than the old-school incandescent bulbs? For starters, LEDs (light-emitting diodes) use one-tenth of the power required for their incandescent cousins. They also increase safety by lighting quicker than other lights, and since LED lights consist of a bunch of tiny, bright lighting elements, they shed a lot more illumination.
 2 Mitch Valentine removed...  2 Mitch Valentine removed the license plate frame and plate, then unbolted the allen head bolts, keeping the old plate holder in place. Once the stock wiring was cut, we could install the Radiantz holder. |  3 The 88 individual LEDs...  3 The 88 individual LEDs on the new light will show up much brighter than the old incandescent bulb light, while using much less power. |  4 After unbolting the stock...  4 After unbolting the stock plate holder and cutting the taillight wires, Valentine bolted the Radiantz plate into its new home. The wiring rests in a special groove that runs from the taillight to the bottom of the plate. It then passes through a hole near the bottom, up under the rear fender, and into the wiring harness under the seat. |
 5 The new Radiantz plate...  5 The new Radiantz plate holder/cat-eye light is on the right. It's a run/brake light model. With its vertical design, the new plate holder is also much cleaner looking than the stock horizontal one it's replacing. |  6 When setting up new electrical...  6 When setting up new electrical toys on your baby, the black wire is usually the ground wire. Valentine attached a connector to it and used one of the plate holder's mounting bolts as a ground. Since this is a run/brake taillight, it has two other wires: red for braking and orange for running mode. He cut them and soldered them to the stock wires that led to the old taillight. |  7 After the wiring was set...  7 After the wiring was set on the groove, Valentine used aluminum tape to keep it in place. It's the same air conditioning tape you buy at home improvement stores, and has advantages over duct tape: it's thinner, so the plate itself will slide home easily when it goes on, and it doesn't dry and peel like duct tape does when used outdoors. |
 8 The license plate slid...  8 The license plate slid in smoothly. A tiny Allen head bolt holds it in place but isn't big enough to mar the look of the holder/taillight setup. |  9 Rather than re-wire the...  9 Rather than re-wire the entire bike, Valentine opted to make use of the stock wiring harness under the seat, allowing him to connect all of our new lighting wires in one convenient place. |  10 Radiantz used its 16-LED...  10 Radiantz used its 16-LED Tokerz turn signals, front and rear, for the BMC. Their smaller size means a cleaner look for the back fender and wheel. |
 11 After loosening the rear...  11 After loosening the rear fender bolts, Valentine tilted the fender forward so he could get to the bolts and wiring for the turn signals. The wiring passes through a hollow bolt and into the signal. The bolt also attaches the signal to the fender. A drop of red thread locker secured the bolt. |  12 Valentine's next step...  12 Valentine's next step was to cut the wires to the stock signals, slide a piece of black shrink tubing onto the remaining old wires, then solder the wiring for the new ones in place. Since we're going from normal turn signals to run/turn models, the wiring is slightly different. The orange wire is the running signal -- it keeps the light on when the bike is running to increase visibility -- while the red is for higher intensity in turn mode. The run wire connected to the wiring harness, while the red turning wire went to the wires for the old turn signals -- brown for the right turn signal, purple for left. |  13 A few passes of the heat...  13 A few passes of the heat gun shrank the black tubing into place over the soldered connection. This cut/solder/heat shrink procedure is pretty much how we connected the new wiring to the stock electrical system. But in order to make the signals flash... |
 14 ...Valentine had to install...  14...Valentine had to install a solid-state flasher. The 0.4-amp load generated by LED turn signals isn't enough to activate most stock flashers. By contrast, the solid state is a transistor version that doesn't need a minimum amount of current to make the signals blink. You can also use a pen or pencil to adjust the flash rate with a switch on the turn module. Some good old double tape held the flasher in place next to the wiring harness. |  15 Since the new flasher...  15 Since the new flasher is transistorized, it has a ground wire, unlike the stock one. We used the frame as our ground connection. The red wire is the input and the white is the output. Male connectors joined these two wires to the bike's electrical system and a spade connector held the ground wire in place. |  16 The rear lighting was a...  16The rear lighting was a done deal, so Valentine turned his attention to the front. The new Firestar Nova Tri-bar headlight (right) is smaller and cleaner than the stock unit. |
 17 After snugging the allen...  17 After snugging the allen bolt for the Lazer Star in place on the lower triple tree, Valentine routed the stock wiring into the headlight housing. The white wire is the low beam, the blue is high beam, and, as in most cases, the black is the ground wire. |  18 The new front turn signals...  18 The new front turn signals are a much smaller alternative to the stock lights and their clear lenses will blend better with the chromed finish of the forks than the stock amber lenses. |  19 Mounting the new signals...  19 Mounting the new signals was pretty easy. Their clamps bolted to the forks. Once that was completed... |
 ...Valentine routed their...  ...Valentine routed their wires into the headlight housing and joined them to the wiring harness. |  21 Once the wires were soldered...  21 Once the wires were soldered together and wrapped in shrink tubing, the cover was screwed on to the housing. Valentine recommends using Loctite or silicone to hold the screw-on cover in place, since it might vibrate off otherwise. He lined up the headlight to make sure it was parallel to the ground so that it would shine at the correct height, then tightened its mounting bolt. Our new lighting makes the BMC look even sharper than it did before, as well as more visible in traffic -- all because we changed to smaller, yet brighter, illumination. | |