Bandit Headlight 2

Been continuing with the headlight. Mainly just sorting out the wiring. The stock light was used as a sort of 'dumping ground' for half of the wiring loom, so with the new light in place (which doesnt have any magical secret compartment) I had to move the loom behind the headstock.

There is this sort of space below the tank, just behind the headstock, above the engine. I mashed all the wires I could into that area and then spent a bit of time extending wires as necessary. Then I attacked it with a few zip ties to try and organize it, but without much luck, it was still fairy lose and in danger of sitting on the engine.

So I came up with the solution of a sort of plate for it all to sit on, suspended between the frame rails. I started with a cardboard template as per..

Then it was a process of basically looking and marking out with the sharpie, chopping bits off and repeating as necessary to get the right shape.

Fortunately there are some tapped holes in the frame at almost the right location for fixing it to. But they where at a funny angle, so I had to do some bending wizardry on the 1mm sheet.

Rounded up the corners to protect fingers and hay-presto here is my simple wire storage/heat shield bandit mod;

Hard to take an effective pic of it in place, but you get the idea...

The wires are still a mess, but at least they are safely out of the way. As the sheet is only 1mm thick it does bow slightly under the weight on it, but no one can see so I dont really mind

That's the headlight sorted for now (assuming it passes MOT!), but I'm not overly keen on the way it sticks out. This is mainly due to the stock speedo/tacho arrangement that pushes the headlight forward. In an ideal world Id like to swap them for a much smaller/neater electronic unit, then I could make some new brackets that would hold the headlight much closer to the forks.... but I don't have £130 to splash on a fancy dash!