First of all I must apologise for my site being off-line for the last few days. I have the company that registers my domain name auto-renew the registration when it falls due but, on the day that they tried to deduct the amount, there wasn’t enough money in the account for them to do so. What really cheeses me off is that they didn’t notify me that it was so so that I could correct it, they simply assumed that I didn’t want to renew and so the registration was allowed to lapse. No notification from them at all. So I suddenly found that I couldn’t log on. When I contacted them they told me that they had tried to auto-renew but weren’t able and that my registration was “in redemption”. You know where this is heading, don’t you? I could get it OUT of redemption and renew the registration of the domain name but it would cost me $220 to do so. Seriously, Ned Kelly’s mother wouldn’t have let her kids play with these guys.
So I coughed up their exorbitant fee and after being told that the site would be back up within 24 hours, waited two more DAYS before they fixed it for me. Not happy, Jan and, again, my sincere apologies.
I have long been convinced, long before this week, that Japanese bike manufacturers do not think about how difficult a bike will be to WORK on, just how NICE it will look when it assembled the first time. And that, if the bike DOES have to be worked on, it will be by a Japanese mechanic with tiny, little Japanese fingers. This contention was frustratingly proved to be correct again over the weekend. Earlier last week I noticed that the right hand headlight on the VFR had stopped working. You don’t usually look at the headlights of your bike while you’re riding and I only noticed it because I saw the reflection of one light only on the back of a van I was stopped behind at a traffic light. Bugger. Now I got pretty good at doing lamps on my 4th Gens. While I won’t say it was easy, it was pretty straightforward if you did it right. Looking at the design of Rhonnda sort of worried me that it wasn’t going to be anywhere near as easy.
I first tried to do so by just reaching my hand down inside the fairing and pulling the leads off the back of the bulb. There was no way they would move, no matter how hard I tried. There just wasn’t the room for me to get my large, non-Japanese fingers into the space. After cussing and sweating for some time, and trying the other bulb as well, I decided that I needed to have more space so I started taking bits off. I must add that this was the very last resort, tearing a bike apart is not something that I enjoy doing.
As you can see from the gallery below, I ended up having to remove the mirrors, the bubble screen, the panel that surrounds the instrument panel and the cover plates for the internal mounts of the fairing bubble. Only then was I able to remove the rubber gaiter that attaches to the back of the headlamp unit and undo the spring clip (which is also a nightmare) that secures the bulb into the housing. And even THEN I still could not disconnect the leads from the back of the bulb. It took a screwdriver to prise the plug off the tangs on the back of the bulb and I had to do this for both bulbs.
Great, job done, eh? Oh, no, little Japanese fingers, remember. I connected the plugs to the tangs on the new bulbs (one bulb at a time), then re-inserted the bulb into the headlamp housing. That part was reasonably easy, the arrangement of tabs on the bottom flange of the bulb means that they can only fit one way. BUT the catch into which the end of the spring clip must go in order to secure the bulb is at the TOP of the housing, totally obscured under the internal fairing support bracket. The only way to attach it is to do it by feel and HOPE that it clicks in. Eventually it did, both of them being equally stroppy and then I was able to test and ensure that the bulbs both worked, high and low beam. Then I had to re-assemble the various bits of fairing and mirrors so that I could finish the job. I did, but it took all-up a couple of hours to do.
POSTSCRIPT: When riding on the Brekkie Ride on Sunday, I noticed that Paul’s bike also had a dud right hand headlamp bulb. I pointed it out and said that I’d be happy to help him replace it since I now was an expert on the subject. Instead he decided to entrust the frustration to our local, tame motorcycle shop where both he and I have our bikes serviced. You just KNOW where this is going, don’t you? This morning I watched while Mr Rooke Jnr replaced BOTH bulbs in about 10 minutes without removing ANY panels or parts. I swear, life is so unfair. My only consolation is that Paul had to PAY to get his done, I saved that money by doing the job myself. Given the choice, however, I think I’d have gladly forked over the money and saved myself the frustration.
Time for a coffee, I think. Please let your friends know that we are up and running again, and thank you again for your patience.
small e says
I’m still able to comment Phil..