I have spent ages messing about with the rear light and mudguard for my Honda CM125C. The mudguard the bike came with was a plastic one painted green. Really wanted a shiny one so ordered a new one from a company on-line. The price was ok and pictures looked good. The actual article was a little disappointing as it was clearly a copy and not a very good one. Decided to keep it as a prototype for my rear light assembly. The bike came with a black painted rear light assembly with black painted stalks for the indicators. Having purchased a grab-handle for the back which had indicator stalks. I took a hacksaw to the indicator stalks and cut them off. Filed it all smooth and spent a lot of time polishing and fettleing with the intention of getting it chromed. Then the perfect article came up on eBay. A chrome rear light for my model. These seem to be getting quite rare. Made a bid and secured it quite cheaply. Not bad for a fiver. The actual light unit was rubbish but the metal support was not too bad and a good polish brought the chrome up a treat. Had a real job getting the rusted screws out to remove the old light unit. Resorted to hacksaw in the end. Fitted my light unit to it and mounted it on my ‘cheap’ mudguard.
Next the wiring. Hmmm! The bike end of the wires was a bit the worse for wear. Been modified a few times with soldered connectors and a few non-standard features. Purchased some nice new bullet connectors and returned the wiring to its original state. I’m not the best at electrical stuff but even I can manage to crimp a few bullet connectors. Did lots of double checking with the workshop manual for wire colours and quite a bit of testing with my multi-meter. I’m not sure what the wiring looked like originally but decided to add a couple of rubber grommets where the cable passes through the mudguard and there is a point on the underside of the mudguard to support the cable and keep it away from the wheel. Secured the cable to this with a cable tie and trimmed it off.
Tidied up the cabling and then inserted my lovely new battery. I was impatient. Could have got it cheaper elsewhere but dashed to Halfords and bought one off the shelf. Added some anti-corrosion grease to the battery terminals and connected and….
….it didn’t work! Well it did kind of. When I put the lights on it illuminated the filament in the rear light bulb for the breaks and visa versa. I checked it all through again and couldn’t find anything wrong. There are only three possibilities. At some point during the bikes long history the bike wiring got changed and the colours are swapped OR the rear light unit I am using for some reason has the colour coding reversed OR the bulb is the wrong one for the light unit. For the moment I have reversed the wiring at the light unit and all works as it should. I will check the bulb type at some point but I think its the wiring at the light unit rather than the bulb. Tested indicators and other electrics to make sure the rear light doesn’t flash with the indicators and other ‘Christmas tree’ style lighting effects and everything worked as it should.
The last bit that I need to do at the back is fashion a bracket to hold the number plate. Hopefully won’t be too difficult but that’s for another day.
Picture below shows the almost finished result. This was my first fit before I took it all apart to add the grommets to the mudguard holes. Its not concourse but consistent with my ‘Stage 1’ objective.
