My new tail light (and why I replaced the OEM unit).
Posted: Thu Oct 16, 2014 3:59 am
I happened to notice one day that the nuts holding my tail light on had vanished. Yes, the whole assembly was just sitting there unsecured on the rear fender. It lifted right off.
No problem I thought, I'll just replace the nuts (and use some Loctite). But once I looked up underneath the bike, I realized that wouldn't be happening without a whole lot of disassembly. Because of the subframe, it's physically impossible to reach the attachment points. Hell, I couldn't even see one of them with the fuel tank in the way.
So, after a little research, I replaced the whole thing with this:
The cool thing is this - the factory tail light assembly has the bolts as part of it, with the nuts holding on from inside the fender (the area I couldn't reach). BUT! this Vespa tail light is different; it's on the receiving end of the bolts. All I needed was a pair of bolts protruding out of the existing holes in the fender.
So I snaked some string down through the holes, down to below the bike, tied some bolts to it, and carefully pulled them back up through the holes. I stuck some teflon washers on the bolts to keep them from falling back out. Then it was just a question of bolting up the new tail light bracket, wiring it up, and screwing on the lens.
Bingo! Not only is my problem solved, I also now have a dead-sexy new tail light!
No problem I thought, I'll just replace the nuts (and use some Loctite). But once I looked up underneath the bike, I realized that wouldn't be happening without a whole lot of disassembly. Because of the subframe, it's physically impossible to reach the attachment points. Hell, I couldn't even see one of them with the fuel tank in the way.
So, after a little research, I replaced the whole thing with this:
The cool thing is this - the factory tail light assembly has the bolts as part of it, with the nuts holding on from inside the fender (the area I couldn't reach). BUT! this Vespa tail light is different; it's on the receiving end of the bolts. All I needed was a pair of bolts protruding out of the existing holes in the fender.
So I snaked some string down through the holes, down to below the bike, tied some bolts to it, and carefully pulled them back up through the holes. I stuck some teflon washers on the bolts to keep them from falling back out. Then it was just a question of bolting up the new tail light bracket, wiring it up, and screwing on the lens.
Bingo! Not only is my problem solved, I also now have a dead-sexy new tail light!
