Hey all. As I mentioned in my Winter Projects thread, I was planning a little LED project. I've seen some bikes with some accent lighting, but never really paid much attention on how to do it. This may not be a 'mod' for everyone, but I think it looks ok.

To start, what you need:
- Bike
- LED Light strips. They are on eBay for pretty cheap. Link here. I ordered 8 of them, knowing that at least 1 would not work. I used 6 on the bike. Just make sure its 12V.
- Soldering iron
- Heat shrink
- Electrical tape
- Wire cutters/wire strippers
- Gator slips (not manditory, but helpful)
- Zap straps
- SPST switch (get these at radio shack)
- Wire tap (not mandatory, but much easier to use)
- 18 gauge wire (stranded!). I'd get some 2 connector wire (so you can run both polarities together. I only had 1 connector, so I just used it.

So to start, you can mock up where you want your strips and use gators to wire them to your battery to see it lit up. I'd definitely recommend testing your strips before you install them. Remember led's are polarity sensitive.

I decided to mount 2 strips on the front fender, 2 on the frame where the service cover is, and 2 on the frame above the swing arm.




After mockup for the service doors and fender.



If you havent already, you need to remove the rear side covers, the seat, tank, and front cowl access panels. These led strips had 3M adhesive on the backs, but I doubt it will be strong enough to hold in the elements, so I secured them with zap straps.
Here you can see the rear light

Solder up your connections. Use either heat shrink or electrical tape to seal it up. For the 2 rear lights, it makes sense to connect the 2 lights together and only run 1 pair of wires up to your switch.

Because the leads on the lights aren't lone enough to span the bike, you will need to use your hookup wire to join everything together. With these lights, they came with tiny 24-26ga wires, so you can't use butt connectors to join your wires - that means your soldering.
Next I decided to find where I was going to draw power from. You could run a (fused!!) line directly from the positive terminal on the battery, but I decided against this because a) too much runnung unnecessary wire and more importantly b) I wanted the key to control the power to them. This way you can't leave the lights on accidentally or someone won't walk buy and hit your switch! After looking at the wiring diagram, I saw there was a "position light". I don't really know what this is, maybe its not used on the Canadian spec bike. Either way, out of the ignition, the position light is powered by a solid brown lead. This goes to a large connector near the fuse box. I used a wire tap to draw power from here, without having to cut the wire. I wanted to do this mod so that it could be reversed without any permanent evidence.


Here is how it works with the key.
Key OFF (Lock)

P. Lock

OFF

ON



Now you can bring up the wires from the service panel area. Again, these lights are attached using zip ties.
A bit tougher is the front wheel fender. I ran the wires up the brake lines wrapping them in electrical tape all the way up. Its important to leave some slack to allow for turning and suspension action.

I used a simple SPST switch to control the lights.


One side of the switch is connected to the wire tap.

The other side it where all the positive leads from the lights comes into.


Now just to connect all the grounds together and ground the wires. I used a bolt for a bracket holder on the forks. Clean up your wires so you don't have a rats nest...
And your done!