Lights, Camera, .... Planning

The tail light and rear turns arrived yesterday.  I positioned the tail using some double-faced tape to see where it would look best on the curved fender.  Something like this:

This puts the light facing directly backwards with the plate on an angle.  I attached an old plate to see where the fender might be cut and outlined it with black tape.

The plate would hang over just a bit of the fender.

Next I replaced the orange lens with red lens on one of the turn signals and in the process found that the turns have a running light in them. Very good.  Extra light in the rear.

I tried a couple of locations.

I'm thinking of mounting the turns off the tail light using a tubular mount like on the front of the bike. This will take a bit more planning to find suitable tubing.  More as I progress.

My plan is to NOT disable the existing lighting until I have the new lighting working, then I will remove the old, and THEN cut the fender.  I want as little down time as possible during this build.

Opening up the back

I removed the rear tire to remove the final bracket from the chrome axle covers and while I was at it, also removed the lower belt guard and lower "fender".  This opened up the area quite a bit.  I like the look.

The new tail light and rear turn signals arrived.  I'll be measuring the rear fender for the cut and will bob it back quite a bit.  More in next post.

Trouble in Paradise

Joined this great forum dedicated to the Road Star, roadstarclinic.com. In a "Hello, My name is..." posting in the Introduction section, which was immediately, and enthusiastically responded to, one of the posters suggested to have the bike's VIN run by a dealer to see if a mandatory transmission safety recall had been applied.

I called the ORIGINAL dealer, Barney's of St. Petersburg, and Mike, the service manager, ran the VIN and sure enough, it had not been applied.  Seems some clip might fail taking out the 4th pinion gear which would lock up the transmission while going down the road.  Yikes!  I scheduled the recall repair which requires an upgrade kit to be ordered. Kit should arrive end of May and the repair will be scheduled sometime the first week of June.

Another poster on the Intro post, suggested the recall was precautionary as no one had reported an actual failure.  I'm glad.  I will continue to ride it until the repair has been made.  This old 2000 Road Star hasn't failed in all this time so likely will continue to go down the road just fine.

Oh, I also scheduled tire replacement while it was in the shop.  The shop recommends the very tire I was planning on having installed: Michelin Commanders.