Hooking up the deadlights was pretty easy.
1) Remove the two screws in the upper cowl section corners that line up with the black plastic hood. Work that off gently to keep from breaking the tabs that hold it in place.
2) Reach down into the scooter and find the connectors for the turn signals. To do this, reach your hand down to the deadlight, then trace the wire back to the empty connector. Look for an identical connector which is hooked up to the turn signal switch. Disconnect those.
3) Take out the bolts holding the DOT signals. They're about 2" long. When you take them out, the DOT signal light will hang loose. What I ended up doing was tugging at the wires gently until I could see the small inline connectors (not the ones you disconnected in step 2) and pulled them apart. The DOT signal will come off out the side. Do that for the other side.
4) Now, you'll have the internal wire running up into the instrument cluster on one end, and the connectors you separated in the beginning on the other. What I did was pull that wire out through the cowling, gently, a bit at a time, and fished out the small leads. You end up with 3 pieces: the two DOT stalks with their leads on the end, and the central wires (they're wrapped) that run down the middle to the turn signal switch.
5) Now just connect the deadlights to the turn signal switch connectors and you're done! Photo of what it looks like:
I believe the right side is the red one and the left side is the white one, but it's easy enough to test. The green/black wire you're seeing there goes to the innermost LED on the right hand side of the headlight if you're in a seated position.
I had already taken out the amber lenses. My chrome amber bulbs finally showed up on Wednesday:
So I installed them in the front. I also went ahead and removed the rear amber lenses and put the bulbs in the tailsection, too.
Front:
Rear:
They're not quite as bright as I would like, but they light up well enough. I think they're fine.
The next thing to do was attack the LED situation. I don't really like the front LEDs that are stock, so I opted for some blue ones and some white ones from SuperBright LEDs, (thanks DaveLHunter for the tips) and mixed and matched. Here's a closeup in shadows with two blue on one side and the stock on the other:
Pretty intense. Too intense for my liking. So I pulled out the inner blues and put in white LEDs. Now, they look like this:
By day, they're not so bad, but at night, they're still a bit intense. I'm not sure if I like them. Some part of me thinks a yellow LED would look better and be a little...smoother, I guess. If I went with a bluer HID light, it might change the overall look. I'm not sure yet. I'm going to give it a few days and see how I feel about it. At roughly .76 per LED, it's not a burden to try a few out.
The next thing I did was take the hugger off the rear tire. It requires a LONG socket extension to get it off. I'm considering trimming it and shaping it a bit with a dremel, and then priming it and painting it bright white with a red accent piece. But in the mean time, the rear is even cleaner now.
Kinda makes that giant airbox stand out. I need to call Scooterworks and find out if putting a pod filter on it would screw up the EFI.
Also took the reflectors off the forks. (Seriously? Foam TAPE?)
So it's moving along. New mirrors are next, I think. Maybe some bar end mirrors but I'm not sure yet. I'll post when I get the hugger re-painted, shaped and installed.
