FiXXation

I wish I had some idea which connectors I should go after. After it started working normally, I noticed the fuel pump pressure up time was also involved. It was much shorter during the hyper check period, and it seemed that there was a little bogging when taking off from rest during that time. But, with the roads wet, I wasn't trying to torque away, either.

Now, as of about 24 hours after the problem appeared, it is gone. I now get a full dash indicator/light check on every power on.

Last night with a fan running on the bike, as it was drying out, the normal dash check sequence started happening if I did a quick ignition key off/on cycle of less than 3 seconds. Otherwise, the hyper quick dash check would happen on first key on after a rest, or longer than 3 seconds between off/on cycles. This afternoon, after a rest, the dash check cycle is normal on first key on, then hyper short after a quick key off/on cycle. For all I know, this behavior is normal, as I didn't pay much attention to it before yesterday.

After riding through a heavy wind-blown rain (whiteout conditions), I noticed the digital dash's power up self-test sequence now completes in less than half a second. It appears that it may try to do the same light show that it used to, but now it is so fast that I'm not sure. The lights, indicators, and read-outs seem to work OK, it's just the test sequence that is hyper fast. Has anybody run into this situation before?

I make that at just under 80 mph with stock gearing.

Blue Loctite and 20 N-m torque, but no new bolts as called for in the shop manual. It'll also be interesting to see if I have changed the wheel balance, but the tire is pretty well used up anyway.

After 3 1/2 years of gazing at the Bird, I noticed that the front left and right brake disks were not mounted symetrically. There are 6 mounting bolts, and 7 "stars" in the carrier pointing at 7 floating pins for the disk itself on each side. When I looked across the wheel, the stars and floating pins were in different relative positions to each other. I pulled the bolts out of the right disk and proceeded to discover that there appears to be only one position out of the 6 that "synchs" and lines up with the other side (makes sense if you do the geometry). After reinstalling it in synchronized bliss, and lock-tighting the bolts back to specification, I came back in to look at pictures of other Birds, and discovered that many of the pictures show the same asynchronous disk mounting. Have I just undone and messed up something that Soichiro Honda did on purpose (perhaps due to the offset position of the left and right calipers)?

In the old days, a tube type tire did not have the same kind of butyl rubber membrane inside the carcass that would actually hold air. I don't know about now days. A link.

If the bulbs are actually making contact like they should, then it sounds like it could be a bad ground. That could cause the current from one bulb to try to find a ground path through another bulb filament. But, from the wiring diagram, it looks like the turn signal grounds are common with the headlight and tail light, so if they aren't giving any problems the bad ground doesn't make any sense. The turn signal switch would be another place where either the front or rear could fail, but it appears that the switch is redundant internally with separate contacts for front and rear, so that switch failing for both front and rear at the same time would seem remote. Perhaps you have hammered the contacts in the relay if you have been rapid-flashing for a while. You've got me. Time for disassembly and checking with a volt meter.

Since the Birds don't really take much to start in my experience, what will the additional cold cranking amps capacity buy you? Will it require the charging system to consistently put out more to keep it topped off? Is the 14 heavier than the 12?

To state the obvious, the rear lights (1156) are single-filament turn signals only, no running/parking light filaments. After my chrome bulbs went dark and came back on by themselves a couple of times, I went with the Sylvania Silver Stars (1157A ST front and 1156A ST rear). They're a little pricy, but they fit in the sockets cleanly with no fiddling necessary to get the contacts made up. They give off more light than the chrome bulbs, but don't look quite as good with the clear lenses, since they have a blueish tint when off. I wouldn't think the chrome bulbs would have anything to do with over-heating unless you have a short somewhere in your wiring or light switch, causing the stator to be burning at maximum amps to try to keep up. Edited to add: I just looked back at your previous post and see that you had already picked up some Silver Stars, but you didn't say whether you had tried them or not after getting some replacement bulbs from Clear Alternatives.

No need to host photos anywhere. Use the Manage Current Attachments menu below the Add Reply window. You can click the Browse button to browse your PC hard drive, find the photo you want to attach to this post, UPLOAD it, then click on it in the Manage Current Attachments window when your cursor is where you want the photo attached.

Don't know about cheap, but I use this scissor jack (configured as in lower right corner): BlackJack Lift I got it to do cleaning and maintenance on my VTX1300C because it doesn't take up much room when it's not being used, as compared to the typical hydraulic lifts. The compressed height is about 4 5/8", so if his VTX1800 sits lower than that, he might not be able to use it. It just fits under my VTX1300C frame if I help it by carefully standing the bike up as I slide it under. With the four movable frame cradles, you can vary the lift point from front to back to raise the front or rear. I use it on the garage floor with no tie-downs and have found it stable enough to remove the wheels one at a time. It seems to be very sturdily built, as opposed to some of the "removable center-stand" type lifts that slide under and lever the bike up.

Can you still get it up on the center stand?

Unless your front marker lights have been modified, they are probably twin filament, two contact 1157 type bulbs. It is possible that the running lamps have been disabled so that you have turnsignals only, but the standard setup would be low candlepower running lights with higher candlepower turn signals on the second filament. This would require a more complicated LED bulb. An additional complication for front LEDs on the Blackbird is that most LEDs are very directional in their light output. This works OK on the rear, where the light socket points straight out to the back. However, the front sockets angle at about 45 degrees from the outside toward the center of the bike. I think you would get very little forward light from either the LED bulbs themselves or from the reflector, if the LED bulb is flat in design. There are some LED "tower" bulbs being made now which have rows of LEDs around the circumfrence with additional LEDs on the top surface, but at least one site that was originally offering those in amber now only offers them in red. Tower LED Lights If you find some that work well on the front, be sure and let us all know.

Not normal here. My McCulloch low beam will flash once, then start warm up with the motor running or not. Just for grins and giggles, I just went out and set the high and low beams to come on with the key and gave it a try. Both bulbs flashed once then started coming up to full brightness when I turned the key to on without starting the engine. (I see spots before my eyes now.) You said you have the HID on the high beam. What are you using for your low beam?

I once had an 1157 bulb in my old Mustang, that worked, and tested OK with a cheap ohmmeter, but drew enough amps to regularly pop the circuit breaker. It seemed to have a short inside the base with just enough resistance to keep from burning the bulb, the socket, or the wiring up. It finally turned a toasty light brown color to give me a hint that it was the problem. That one was the only bulb to do that out of many in my lifetime. YMMV.

These don't look water resistant/proof. Are they? The description doesn't say.

I have a 30" inseam and just went from a factory seat to a Smuggler. The bike has no 6mm spacer on the rear shock. The factory seat, being narrower on the front, allowed me to just flat-foot on a stop on level ground. It assisted in keeping me planted against the tank so my short arms could reach the stock clip-ons more easily. It also tended to restrict side-to-side movement due to the more crowned design, somewhat restricted air flow to my tush, and gave me a permanent wedgie on a long ride. The Corbin is wider at the front, flatter from front to back, sits a little lower, and has a slightly larger padded area at the crotch area at the tank. The Corbin padding is also firmer than the stock foam. The result is I can not get my heels down on a stop on level ground and backing up on any loose surface is dicy. The seat does not hold me against the tank on rapid acceleration like the stocker did (I have to "hold on" to keep from sliding back). The crotch pad gently pushes me away from the tank just cruising. The wider, flatter surface allows more movement to relieve pressure points, as well as allows more air to keep my tush more comfortable on longer rides, and no more wedgie. My knees accept the lower seating position OK, and the wider front portion lends a little thigh support that the factory seat doesn't. The seat was not enough lower to have to adjust the mirrors. Depending on your priorities and the length of your rides, I would think if you are short enough and don't like tip-toeing or one-legging it at a stop, the factory seat would be worth trying.

I went ahead and swapped the chrome bulbs for the Sylvania Silver Stars 1157A ST and 1156A ST's. My take on them is that they are brighter because they give off light directly from the filaments rather than reflecting all the light down away from the crown of the globe as in the chrome bulbs. The blueish tint that shows around the base looks a little strange, but kind of compliments the HID's. I had to figit the left-hand bulb socket back into the Clear Alternatives reflector in order to orient the filament in the same vertical orientation as the right-hand bulb. Since the filament clearly shows through the Silver Star's coating, this seemed more important than it was with the chrome bulbs. For some reason, Clear Alternatives oriented the left bulb socket notches differently from the original Honda amber lense reflectors, and also oriented them differently from the left to the right side.

I was referencing information on the Osram Sylvania Automotive Catalog web page under the High Performance Lighting hot link: Osram Sylvania Automotive Catalog which appears to say that their standard (non-Silver Star) Long Life 1157 bulb puts out more candlepower than their Silver Star 1157A ST bulb. This appears to agree with airborneXX's observation of the Clear Alternative Lense getting warmer with a standard amber bulb (the bulb radiates stronger amber light, letting the lense get warmer and retaining less heat on the bulb) as opposed to the Chrome Bulb situation where the weaker amber light allows the Clear Alternative Lense to run cooler, while the bulb itself gets hotter (due to retaining more of the heat energy on the bulb itself). I wondered if any Sylvania Silver Star users (if there are any) had noted the amount of heat built up on the bulb as compared to the Chrome bulbs, since I couldn't find any similar information on them. If you actually go to the referenced web page and look at the tables that are generated under the Silver Star Signal Lighting and Long Life Miniature Lamps links, you will see that they generate the information tables in a way that makes it difficult to transfer the information to try to make this any clearer than mud.

John, the switch is installed and working just fine. I guess it would not be the best thing to have a LEO stop you for no headlight, then dazzle him with the HIDs firing off.

Wow! Got it today, John! You must have a time machine for a post office there! Mucho thanks, again! :icon_clap: Also, a moment of silence for the Euro Bird that sacrificed itself to make this possible. :icon_pray:

I've already gone back to the amber bulbs with the clear lenses on my VTX because a friend I ride with said he couldn't always see my chrome turn signals when I was in front. But, for the Bird's clear front lenses, I'd rather not put an amber bulb in just for the looks. I've also thought about the Sylvania Silver Stars 1157 and 1156 bulbs, but when I looked on the Osram Sylvania web site a couple of months ago, the rated life of those bulbs was shown at about 350 hours. I just looked again today, and it now shows a more reasonable 1200 hours. Has anyone compared the heat output of the Silver Stars to the OEM amber bulbs? They are rated at 24 MSCD as compared to their standard long life 1157 which is rated at 32 MSCD (Mean Spherical Candela = Lumens/12.57), but both burn the same 2.1 amps. I would assume this might mean the bulb surface is absorbing some 25% of the element's energy, not letting it out as amber light.

According to Hal on the Honda VTX forum it is a new filter for the cruisers to go along with the new Honda full synthetic oil: The original Honda filter for the cruisers (15410-MCJ-003) is also about 1/4" shorter than the CBR1100XX filter. Looking down inside the two original filters, the CBR1100XX filter (15410-MM9-013) has a visible spring at the bottom which I would assume works the relief valve. The cruiser filter has a metal "button" sticking up from the bottom. Different designs internally, although the bases and outer diameters appear the same. Edited to add: I just looked up the oil filter for the 2005 CBR1000RR on www.ronayers.com, and it also specified the shorter filter, 15410-MCJ-003, so I assume is was good for more performance than the cruiser line might require.