Licence Plate Relo -- part 2

Today I completed the plate relocation by mounting the LED plate illumination unit I had purchased originally for the behind seat mount that I abandoned.

Here's the completed project. Right is daylight and left is nighttime. Not perfect but adequate.

I first had to wire up sufficient cable to reach from the plate to the power source under the tank. The previous installation wiring wouldn't work. So I found some 3 wire outdoor cable used for another project.

I opened up the unit and desoldered the old wiring and resoldered the new cable using just the red and black wires for postive and ground. Notice how all the lamps face different directions to spread the light across the plate.

I used a bit of heat shrink to tidy it all up.

Next I used heavy duty outdoor double faced tape and put one face on the back of the unit, trimming the excess tape around the edges.

Now you can see what the little tab was going to be used for. I hammered it so it would tilt inward toward the actual plate do direct the LED lights onto the plate itself.

Not quite mounted, but lining it up. Have to remove the outer face red plastic protection film to expose the sticky side.

After mounting the lamp, I fed the wire around the back of the plate and under the plate mounting bracket using zip ties to make a clean wrap around the back of the bracket ending in the middle.  I then drilled a hole through the frame to feed the wire through into the inside.

Wire fed and all tidied up. It's a snug fit and the wire will be just fine. I might apply some black silicon around the wire to prevent rust.

I snaked the cable up along the main wiring harness zip tying as I went along and crossed under the frame back bone to the wiring squirrels nest to attach to the blue wiring (tail lights) and the black wiring (ground). Ya, I know. It's a mess.

But some more zip ties make it better. The heart of the combo stop/turn signals is the three relay set on the right. They turn separate turn signals and brake signal into a pair of lights. See this post for details on how I did that.

Also, while I had the tank off, I needed to replace the gasket and packing of the gas petcock. It has been leaking a long time on FUEL and on RESERVE. A new petcock would have cost $65, but these two simple rubber pieces only set me back $8 and they did the trick. This tank was full so I had to tip up the petcock. I did leak a bit of fuel out the gas cap, but no big deal.

This is the petcock with the control removed. The little man gasping is the packing which was brittle from age (and ethanol gas!).

These were easy to replace and cured the leak.