Final Steps....

The bike has finally reached completion..... Well sort of! After fitting the fairing on Friday night, a week ago, the next day saw it's first shakedown run. I accompanied a beginners ride for the Herts TRF and the bike performed faultlessly.

On Sunday it got a thorough cleaning and a few remaining jobs were completed. First, replacing the front wheel bearings (another simple job), then connecting up the rear fuel tank and finally fitting the new rear plastics.

The fuel tank was fairly simple to plumb in but first I removed it!

This was because the back wheel was touching the inside edge of the tank, so I modified the bracket to allow the tank to sit a few millimetres further out. I then fed the fuel line through two holes already present in the air box from where it had been fitted previously.

I had bought a new fuel tap of the type that screws in and out, rather than having a lever as I thought this was less likely to get turned on (or off) accidently. It fitted very neatly behind the frame rail....

 

And then I completely pulled apart the fairing and electrics!

Having fitted the halogen lamps, which required relays to handle the current I had decided what I really wanted was some LED lighting. At the HUBB UK meet I had looked at a couple of Rally Bikes, fitted with Vision X LED lamps. All very nice but at about £115 each, way above my budget.

Then I discovered some LED lamps on eBay at £26 a pair. Well that was too cheap to ignore and if they didn't work out I'd always have a pair of auxiliary lights to bolt on the 990 Adventure!

The lamps look almost identical to the halogen lamps, being almost the same diameter, although a little shorter.

First stage was to change the mounting, as can be seen they have a clamp to fit on a round bar. This was unbolted and a hole drilled into each side of the lamp (having checked there was a nice bit of "empty space" behind the LED and electronics. Into these was fitted a "rivnut" giving an M6 thread in each side. The lamps were then bolted between the plates of the nav tower in exactly the same way as the halogen lamps.

I wired them up straight to the battery to see how they worked, they may have been cheap but they certainly seem to chuck out plenty of light...

Then I removed all the electrics and started again. As the lamps only draw 30 watts (as opposed to 55 watts for the halogens) I felt safe running them straight through the switch wiring without needed the protection of the relays. After all the standard KTM headlight runs at 35W and doesn't need them. So I have retained a single relay for the "master switch" but that's it and even this is designed to be easily bypassed in the event it fails.

The new electrics before being wired together, much simpler than the old set up

 

The final job was to replace two of the fairing mounts, when I first made them I used 3mm x 19mm aluminium strap but only had enough for two mounts. The other two were made from 2mm strap so were a bit too flexible. In the meantime I managed to get hold of some more 3mm aluminium so replaced the two offending mounts. Originally I had also tapped a thread into the mounts but now replaced all of these with rivnuts to give a longer thread and a more secure connection.

So finally it was ready for it's first Rally, the Ryedale Rally in North Yorkshire....

To be continued