I hand test each and every one of these LED bulbs. That means I actually put each bulb in a vintage socket to make sure the contacts touch and complete the circuit. I guarantee these bulbs will work and will issue a full 100% refund if they don’t.

Check out the new wide angle bulbs in the Austin Cafe Racer Store. Please click the link on the right hand side bar or click below.
http://www.austincaferacer.com/store/store.html

Cafe Racer Parts

To this day I still can’t get the LED Turn signals to blink. I did get them to work last summer, but they quickly reverted to their non-blinky state soon after. I have no earthly clue as to why, but it doesn’t worry me. The first place I suspected that could be the root of the problem is the switch. I figured I’d poke around in there and try to simplify the already overcomplicated antiquated switching mechanism. Take a look, it’s weird.

I don’t think I ever really looked inside even when I was installing the clubmans.

Filthy. I suspect Honda used some kind of dialectic grease on the sliding mechanism and all sorts of dirt and grime collected in there for 35 years.

It really is a mechanical wonder but could have been engineered with a much more simplistic design. The first thing I knew needed to go was the Orang/White and Light Blue/White wires. They belonged to the running lights on the original turn signals. It’s these wires I suspected might be causing my no-blinky malfunction. Let’s clip them and toss them for good.

After I took the whole switch apart I cleaned the grease off of everything, including the weird sliding switch mechanism.

Filthy.

These little sliding things come off too.

Shot of the rails.

The spring switch part was also covered in grease and grime. One more interesting aspect of this piece is that there is a ball bearing that’s used to either: 1.) Ground the switch, or 2.) Help slide the switch from left to right. Be very careful and don’t drop it and lose it.

The bottom housing, once again stuffed with some kind of lubricant or grease.

I cleaned every bit of it.

Here you can see the ball bearing back in the housing. It sits in a little triangle groove which has a slit that runs left and right. The other set of wires that I found odd in the switch were the Brown/White wires. The CB550 manual defines these as the tach and speedo bulb wires. Meaning that the lights in the speedo and tach are for some reason running into the turn signal switch which means they are also unnecessary in here. The Brown/White wires are set up to be actively fed power either in the middle, left or right switch mode. Totally unnecessary, we can feed those bulbs power from within the headlight bucket. Let’s de-solder them and get them out of here.

There, as it should be. All we need are the left and right turn signal wires and the pulsing gray wire coming from the relay.

I also went ahead and trimmed some more length off the wires in the headlight bucket.

As a rule of thumb if I take off a fastener that’s rusted or stripped I never put it back on so these bolts are going in the trash.

My local hardware store didn’t have the stainless steel fasteners in the 25mm length I need to replace the originals so I had to get black. These black allen head bolts will eventually rust. I coated them with a little WD40 before installing them.

So, all done and still I’m not getting any blinky-blinky. The lights just come on and stay on as they did before. I have successfully narrowed down the problem. It’s not the switch. Now I’ll have to look carefully at the ground wires in my bucket.

Good day gentlemen. See you next weekend.

In the past week I have drastically rethought my strategy for my front end. I am no longer keeping my original gauges, however, since I have already purchased LED replacement bulbs (in bulk I might add) and now have no use for them, I still want to review them for those that may end up modifying their lights to LED, plus, I plan on selling my bulk lights in pairs and wanted some photos and footage of them in action.

Here we go:

The LEDs are white, which was the brightest available next to green. They will have a slight blue tint to them when viewed through the green gauge faces.

Fresh from China.

You can see the LED bulb is slightly taller, but the base is the same and the tallness doesn’t produce any ill effects, it easily fits in all the bulb receptacles.

They fit perfectly and do a nice job of illuminating the gauge faces. Check out the videos below.

I never bothered to replace any of the instrument bulbs in the year that I’ve had my CB550, it was never a high priority, but seeing as how I have the time and no other major improvements to make on this cafe racer I may as well start now.

I suppose there are many ways to do this, I just wanted the easiest way to poke inside, so I removed the two little acorn nuts, and unscrewed the speedo cable. The gauge came right apart.

I hadn’t realized how dirty and old they were. It was at this point that I decided I was going to replace these all together with some mini gauges.

Surprisingly, there were actually two bulbs inside the speedo. The inside wasn’t any better looking.

Simple classic design, push in and twist counter-clockwise to remove.

Here is a pic of the bottom of the upper portion of the gauge.

Busted and burned out.

The second bulb wasn’t clear, it had a mirror like finish to it. Is this stock? Does anyone know what the purpose of the chrome bulb is?

I was once again surprised, this time by the sheer weight of it. HEAVY!

The lower portion of the gauge was crusty. You can see the weathered and cracked plastic and the rusted metal. I’m going to replace the bulbs for the time being, in fact, I’m going to replace them with LED bulbs, but ultimately the gauges aren’t going to stay on the bike for very long. I see a shiny new mini speedo and tach in my cafe racer’s future.

I’m nearly done with my LED conversion. My new front turn signals came in yesterday evening. They’re all metal, chrome, LED goodness. I couldn’t have chose a better style to suit my front end.

I bought them on from Demon Cycles. Even though they are made in Taiwan, I can vouch that they are well made and brighter than any incandescent bulb. The chromed metal is flawless, and the lens cover and LEDs are well constructed. They are small, have a tiny footprint, and don’t stick out like traditional signals.

18 super bright LEDs. Two wires. Yellow = power, Black = ground. Plug and play. Easy. I popped them right into the orange and light blue harness. No need for the orange/white and light blue/white wires since I won’t be using these as running lights.

Step one: Remove the headlight bucket bolts. These are the same bolts that the wiring harness uses for grounding. The threaded bolts of my new signals will replace these.

The front signals now provide three functions: Signaling, holding the headlight bucket in place to the fork ears, and grounding the wiring harness. Nice.

Clean.

Tonight I’ll post some video of the new signals. They are extremely bright.

Next up on my moto agenda is to replace the gauge lights (speedo / tacho) with new LED bulbs. The bulbs in the gauges are burnt out most likely. I’ve never seen them illuminated. I’d like to replace the pilot light bulbs with LED as well. The only bulbs that work are the neutral and hi-beam indicators.