PIAA lights on ST3S

[martys]

well, I had a nice detailed write up of today's project, but inadvertently deleted it instead of publishing it -crap!

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update: installation details as I recall them:

I decided to remount the PIAA 1100x's I had mounted to the K1200RS last year. I found a set of fender bolt bracket mounts manufactured by local vendor Martin Fabrication and was able to reuse everything else from the original kit. Martin makes brackets for most Ducs, however all appear to only allow for fender bolt mounting. His kit is very nice cnc machined billet aluminum and you can tell as soon as you hold it in your hand it's quality stuff.

Attaching all the pieces was pretty straight forward, one mod I needed to do was to open the lamp capsule and rotate the bulb and lens 90 degress since these units are designed to be hoizontally mounted and the fender brackets mount the lights vertically. Rotating the capsules wasn't too difficult, but it was a super tight fit reassembling that was easily resolved after a few tries and some choice swear words. Problem solved.

Routing the wires was pretty straight forward, up the back of the forks, into the PIAA harness with included connectors, then bundled up the extra and stuffed behind the fuse box on the left side of the fairing. The power and ground went right to the Centec panel that's velcroed to the back of the headlight housing. The included relay for the lights is attached to a fairing frame bolt near the fusebox and the relay hot wire is connected to the same power circuit the lights are on. This is ok since the whole Centec panel is switched with a relay so there's no chance of leaving them on when the bike is off.

The only question I had was on the fuse size since there wasn't one in the power line. It was cut out during the initial installation last year. After initially trying a 7.5a, that promptly blew, I up'd it to a 10a fuse that seems to be holding fine. Now I just need to get them aimed correctly, just in time for turning the clocks back for Daylight Standard Time and looking forward rides home from work in the dark.

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so here's a few pics.

lights mounted with brackets from local vendor Martin Fabrication


light switch mounted with double sided tape on top triple


lighting the way

[Rich Quarre]

Very nice!

[Scottsst]

that looks good Marty thanks for the link on vendor also I think I will have to pick up a set of them soon

[motodave]

BTW Brian Martin from Martin manufacturing is local and will drop off his kits at Eastside Motosports to save a few dollars in shipping. We have worked w/ Brian for a couple of years now and his kits are top notch, although the harness side of his kits can have too long of wires. Not a bad thing in some applications.

[martys]

I think the wires are long cause PIAA makes the lights for cars. Martin's brackets (and others) allow for m/c applications as we've been doing. Even the aiming instructions describe mounting / aiming from above and below the bumper.

also, added the installation details to the original post.

[Nathan Reynolds]

Is that a cockpit photo from an F-22?

[martys]

Originally Posted by Nathan Reynolds

Is that a cockpit photo from an F-22?

hehe, that's pretty good. you should see when it's in full tour mode



I'm still waiting on the heated grips that are on back order, once those are done I think I'll be done with electrical upgrades (for now). never say never I guess .