As promised, a DIY guide to installing LED eyebrow (or also called halo effect) lighting to your 1800 Goldwing. There are a number of forum members that have installed these lights that inspired me to tag along and add the effect to my own 2012 Wing and I have to say.... I am impressed with the ease of installation. Special thanks to WingPilot96 and MikeB for the information necessary to acquire and install them. Like I said, this is an easy install but I took pictures for those like me that like to see it as you do it.
The link to the lights used is HERE:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/162060290493?_t ... EBIDX%3AIT
There are 2 prewired strips that fit the bill perfectly. They are white (actually kind of blueish white) and amber, side emitting LED's in a pretty compact pattern. The price is nice and they are really bright.
So.... to install them. Start by folding your mirrors forward and removing the side screw and rubber grommet that hold the upper corners of the front panel(aka "garnish") and pop the panel out of the retaining grommets. It will look like this-
- Remove the windshield garnish panel first...
Then remove the small panel between the headlamp fixture. It has an allen head bolt on the top center and 2 phillips head screws on the bottom.
- ...then remove the lower panel as well.
You will need to use a cleaner like rubbing alcohol on a rag or premoistened alcohol swab pads to clean the outer edge of the headlamp lense to make sure that the adhesive on the LED strips sticks firmly. Make sure you know the orientation of the emitting surface of the LED before installation. You only get one shot with the adhesive provided. Start the end of the light strip on the bottom, on the outer edge of the flat where the outer panel touches the headlamp. I wish I had gotten a better picture of that but it will really make sense if you lay the light out on the lens starting at the top (without adhering it) and follow it around until you get to the bottom. These strips are PERFECT length for this application. Once you have the end of the strip adhered, continue your way around the lens until you run out of light strip.
You will have the shrink wrapped connection to deal with now. There is a retaining screw that holds the outer panel in place and you need to remove the screw and feed the wire under the tab and out the hole past the screw.
It is up to you to decide what method you use to attach the wiring to the mirror power harness - solder and shrink tube, watertight shrink butt connectors (the method I used) or to purchase the connector ends and make a 'plug and play' connection. The wiring diagram is unnecessary in this case - the green wire is the ground ( attach that to the black wire on the strip) and a couple seconds of snip and test will tell you which wire is for running light and which is for the turn indicator.Turn on the key and select one of the wires and snip it. Marker light goes out, it's a marker. If not, it's a turn. Connect the wires appropriately to your LED strip and seal them up. These strips didn't come with any kind of identification as to which wire is which so I just connected the ground and took a hot wire that I just snipped and used that to determine what was what for the LED's.
It is pretty important that you run the final connected wires around the grommet for the garnish. The wire will get pinched if you don't.
- Get that wire out of the way of the grommet and windshield slide hardware!
Now with it installed, you should have the following:
- Finished product!
I was able to catch the turn signal in mid flash and it looks like this:
After removing the garnish panel and looking at the spaces in the shroud and surrounding areas... well, I need to do some Ebay parusing and see what other ideas I can come up with to add more lighting to the front!
