Integrated CBR LED Tail Light Mounting

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Jediael

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Jul 10, 2009
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Kihei, HI
Alright, Big shout out to jacoviii for bringing my attention to the possibilities of this light! Made for an 03-06 CBR 600rr/ 04-07 CBR 100rr, its actually a perfect fit for the max and only cost about $65 shipped. I received it in 4 days and it looked like a well made unit. The included wiring Harness was also very nicely done.

Light.jpg


In order to mount this light to the Vmax, there are a few modifications that need to be made to the inner fender. They are fairly simple once you get the idea of what is going on. I did all the metal work with tin snips, pliers, and a drill on the living room floor of my condo. A proper garage setup and some actual tools/metal saw would make this process much more efficient/professional looking!!

Here is a pic of the what the bike looked like when we started. The stickers bellow the plate are for the Hawaii safety check.

original.jpg


The first step is to remove the rear fender and inner fender from the bike. Keep the mounting bolts with you as we will use them during the mock-up as well.

Once the fender is removed, The rear mounts must be removed. *IMPORTANT* Save the square flanged nuts (or whatever they are called) that fit into these mounts. They will be very useful later on.

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I used a soldering iron to score along each edge and the broke off very easily. A dremel tool and small cut-off disk would also work well. A sharp knife easily scraped off any remaining bumps.

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At this point, I put the new light in the empty fender to see how it would mount.

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The mount for the stock mount is about an an inch and a half too far back for the new LED so the old mount must be removed and the inner fender shortened.

I started by cutting slits into either side of the inner fender so about 1/4" past the needed clearance for the new light.

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After Cutting the slits, you can also go ahead and cut off the entire section above the rubber grommets for the old light. Bend the entire rear section down 90 Degrees. I did this in reverse order in the pictures and in multiple steps as I kept checking the clearance over the tire.

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Once the new flange was bent down, I pounded out the dips in it to make it a straight, flat piece. Then I put it back into the rear fender, and mocked up the new led light. I did this to get an idea of where the holes should be drilled in the flange for the LED mounting bolts to go through. After the holes were drilled, I cut off excess metal on the outside of them. the Final product should look something like this:

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For the bolt holes, I believe I used a 5/16 inch drill bit; it seems big, but it must be large enough to fit the spacer with a rubber grommet on it. I will explain this in a bit.


At this point, I began to consider how I was going to mount the rear liscense plate. I like the looks of it under the light, so a new mount was going to have to be added to the inner fender. To this end, I took the Hawaii safety sticker mounting plate and (you can see this under the license plate in the starting picture of the bike up top), bent it up to curve under the light and drilled mounting holes in it and the inner fender.

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The double sized hole on the inner fender provides some angle adjustment to the mounting of the plate. I also drilled slots in the license mount (safety sticker thing) to allow for some left to right adjustment. This is what it looked like all together:

From the bottom:
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From the back: (Yes yes I know how crappy this all looks, but just keep reading and remember I have no tools or proper work area!)
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Now its time to make sure the angle of the mounting flange is correct to position the light in the fender.

Attach the inner fender to the fender using the mounting bolt to line everything up.

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Now how are we going to actually bolt in the light? The bolts coming out of the unit are a little skinny and don't mount to a flat surface as they have a section of plastic around them.
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Remember those mounting nuts I told you to save out of the rear light mounts on the fender? It turns out that they fit perfectly (after grinding 1/16 of an inch off of the inner sides ;) ) into the recess of the new light mounts!! Here is one with a rubber grommet on it.
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They will provide an even mounting pressure on the light and work perfectly to hold a rubber grommet. This will give the light a small amount of vibration insulation from the inner fender. (Its how the original was installed so I figured it would be good to copy!)

Here is a picture of the mounting hardware I used. I believe the grommet was 5/16 inside diameter. It just stretched a bit to fit over the square spacer.

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I put everything together and made a few bends to the mounting flange to get the angles right and the light mounted levelly. Here are a few pics along the way. (Side note: I used wing nuts instead of the self locking nuts at this point as they were much quicker to take on and off)

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At this point, I noticed that the mounting flanges on the top of the LED light were just coming into contact with the lip on the rear of the fender. I trimmed about 1/4 off of these and it was fine. If I had a dremel, I might have considered taking them off completely to provide a tighter fit.

trimlight.jpg


In the final mounting, I also added a bit of clear 3m take to the top of the LED unit to provide additional support. It was rock solid without it, but I figured that it would help keep the tip of the light firmly against the fender. Because of the mounting flanges on the light itself, I had to pile up a few strips of the tape.

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WIRING

I ran the wires along the stock route and connected them to the stock harness connections. The included harness setup is great except for two things, the Honda Style connectors and the length of the wires!

The brake wires are simply too short to reach the Max connections under the passenger seat. I cut the old harness off the stock light and used it as an extension of the LED's brake wires (the three short ones in the white connector). Instead of simply cutting off the connector, I removed it from the pins and used them as crimp type links between the LED and Stock wires.

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The wires the run from the turn signals to the resistors in the provided harness are, unfortunately, just a few inches to short. I tried to make it fit and ended up having to re-solder a connection that got pulled out. I recommend adding about 4 inches of wire in the connection before the resistors.

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Finally, I took the original ends off of the stock blinkers and added them to the LED wires. This made for an easy final installation on the bike.

Here are a few pics of the fender back on the bike.

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This final picture was taken at dusk. It was still fairly easy to see outside. The light is very bright and visable!!! :punk::punk:

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I hope this gives everyone a possibility of what can be done with this light. Its one of my new favorite things on the Max and was worth every penny.

ask me any questions you might have!

Cheers!
 
Great write-up! Thanks for taking the time to show us the step by step process. Looks good on the bike, I am considering adding it to the "winter project" list for my bike.
 
I just broke the bracket of the inner fender which is holding the taillight and plate today, too much vibration and the metal is pretty thin there.

So for sure it's giving idea :)

Very nice write up, i almost forgot those sport rear fenders
 
looks great
if i had the inner that is what i would have done
 
Looks good, you guys can also try the CBR 929 LED taillight, very similar and looks great, very popular one to use on swaps!
 
BTW thanks for this post very helpful refrence. I just installed this tail light on my bike with a little slight in a similar manner it looks great. But I am having a little trouble with one of the signals, brake lights work, left signal works but...when I hit the right signal it just flashes one time and then not again, everything seems to be hooked up correctly. interesting thing is that the right front signal still flashes. Does anyone have any suggestions?

I appreciate it...
 
Glad it was helpful!

Does the right front flash at the regular slow rate or does it flash double speed like it would if a bulb was burnt out?

I remember having issues with one of my signals not working as well. It had a bad connection inside one of the inline resistors, and I had to re-solder it. That was an issue caused by trying to make the resistors fit under the seat without adding extra wire to them.

Also, will the right blinker work correctly if you wire it up as if it were on the correctly working left side?

let me know what you figure out!
 
The appreciate the suggestions...

The front blinkers seem to be working normal. I did extend the wires under the seat for a good fit, and when I did my initial tests none resistors were not obstructed.

Interesting thing happened today when I tested the signals though, the first time I put the right blinker on...it worked for a few moments then when I tested the left side and back to the right it did not work anymore. It seems to me a may be a bad connection.

I will take everything apart again and triple check all of the connections and check the resistors and update. I will also test the right blinker to the left side connection.

Thanks,

JD
 
I finally got around to buying and installing this light. I just used 3m tape to put it up against the fender, then used some silicone epoxy and sealed around the edges. Its solid, I don't think its going anywhere. For the plate mount, I just ground out the mounting holes in the plate, and used the two studs in the taillight to mount the plate. I was a little worried about the clearence between the plate and the tire, its perfect. The top of the tire would hit the fender before the plate would hit.

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Yeah, I had started out to do just like the OP, but I really don't like to permanently ruin anything. The only thing I had to cut out were the mounting tabs that stick down off of the inside of the fender.
Feel free to PM me if you need any help.
 
Great write up. A big thanks to ya. I've seen this light on e-bay and wondered? I just started making a custom bracket for mini turn signals,mounded on the side of the brake/tail light. Will use a round brake light,unless I do this mod...lol
Steve-o
 
I finally got around to buying and installing this light. I just used 3m tape to put it up against the fender, then used some silicone epoxy and sealed around the edges. Its solid, I don't think its going anywhere. For the plate mount, I just ground out the mounting holes in the plate, and used the two studs in the taillight to mount the plate. I was a little worried about the clearence between the plate and the tire, its perfect. The top of the tire would hit the fender before the plate would hit.

What would happen if the tail light burned out or something how would you get it back out of there?
 
What would happen if the tail light burned out or something how would you get it back out of there?

Its only silicone epoxy, it should come back off with little effort. I'd be more concerned about removing the factory tabs from the plastic fender.
 
What would happen if the tail light burned out or something how would you get it back out of there?

I would just take a razor blade and cut around the epoxy. Then Peel the rest of it off of the fender. I'm not too concerned about the fender tabs, as I don't plan on re using the factory light. Ever. There's plenty of options that are better looking, and something can always be made to work.
 

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