How to fit HID lighting to your 2008 KLR. One of the best farkles in my opinion. Main beam on before HID First thing of course is to get a kit from Bikegear for a H7 type globe system. When your parcel arrives it will be in this neat box that you can use to store KLR bits and bobs in neatly... Start by removing the windscreen. Then you need to loosen the 6 bolts that hold the fairing to the bike, 4x 6mm Allen heads and 2x 4mm as indicated in the pictures. Then gently move the fairing forward and disengage from the instrument cluster... don't break anything! Let the fairing rest on the front fender/mudguard as you do this. Once moved forward by around 200mm you will be able to unplug the indicator leads and the headlight leads, be careful as the whole lot can fall off at this stage. The indicator leads... Close up... Right... Left... Now for the headlight leads... Once the leads are all unclipped/unplugged you can take the fairing off and put it in a safe place where you cannot step on it/fall over it/drop the bike on it or otherwise destroy it... Beware Murphy lurks where tools are involved! Now comes the tricky part... where to mount the HID ballast, my first thought was to mount it on the instrument mounting. but after taking a good look again it seemed that it would make a good fit inside the fairing... more on that later... After fitting the ballast begin preparation to fit the globe in place of the OEM H7 one... Take out the OEM globe by pulling of the lead then removing the rubber cover... this is what it looks like after being removed Then undo the retaining clip... You will find that the OEM globe has an adapter between the globe proper and the lead... H7 globe and adapter... H7 and adapter removed, this is used to retain the globe in the light fitting itself with the retaining spring/clip. It is 34mm OD by 9mm thick where it the retaining clip rests. The problem is that the kit has no adapter! Fortunately I found a substitute for the dimensions needed... 3x rubber tap mounting washers! They are the right OD and have the right size hole as well as being 3mm thick! Volia! I cut a small slit in each washer to enable them to be slipped over the leads of the HID globe. Actually I removed about 1.5mm, this makes the washers fit better in the light fitting... Now fit the HID globe, pop the washers behind it and clip in the retaining spring, then connect the HID globe leads to the ballast... retaining clips to the small tab... if you get it wrong it will not work but will also not fry anything. "Whew! glad to hear that!" Put the boot back and secure with some Duct Tape, you will have to slit it to get it over the HID globe leads... Once you have fitted the HID system you can put the fairing back and test things. This is what it looked like... Now comes the interesting part... the plug tabs on the OEM light lead needs to be slightly crimped as they tend to be loose on the HID lead tabs... be careful... the plastic around the plug can break but does bend enough when gentle pressure from a water pump plier is applied. The HID is polarity sensitive in respect of the connection to the OEM light socket, I tried it one way and the HID did not work... if this happens to you just swap the leads around and it should work. Oh yes, do not test on a battery charger... it cannot deliver the starting amps the HID system needs to fire up the HID Globe. Rather do the final testing and connecting on the bike. When the HID fires up and everything works as it should you can proceed to refit the fairing... except it wont fit! What now? Aha! Found the problem... this support on the instrument mounting is the problem... the ballast is now taking up the same space as this pipe section wants to occupy... The pipe too long... The remedy is to unclip all leads again... put the fairing in a safe place and grab the hacksaw! yes... you need to trim around 20mm off this projecting pipe... then you will have space for the ballast and fairing support to live together... without causing strife. Once that bit of surgery has been performed you can file the end smooth and give it a dab of matt black spray paint... do not want the Rust Monster to get a hold on your bike now do you? Once the fairing is back in place start by inserting the top 2 bolts first... do not tighten all the way... now do the two bottom 6mm ones followed by the smaller 4mm ones and their spacers... once they are all seated you can tighten them all snugly. That is basically the lot... now check that everything works and if so pack away all your tools... gear up and take your KLR for a test run. While I was doing this farkle I also fitted a few other things like LED lamps for the indicators, lighting and high beam... I also converted my indicator and neutral lamp to be the RH and LH indicator lamps... and fitted an amber neutral indicator LED... and also fitted a switch to give Shrek a Hazard warning facility, more about these mods here... at the same time the temperature hovered around this... chilly... I also had my apprentice Myoo looking on... I like the quote I found as well... it fits in with the purpose behind fitting the light... to be safer at night and to avoid chaos! "Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster, "To the Vanishing Point"
If you do then he will never become real to you... the Crux of the matter is just that... Faith that Jesus is who he said he is and did what he did for you on the Cross. I tripped over the godisimaginary website a while back and was pondering how to answer him... but soon realized that I cannot... God only becomes real when you let him into your life. To many that sounds so stupid... but I know it is true. All I know is that for many years I knew the truth but had no faith... now I have faith as big as a mustard seed and my life has become Indescribable... all I can do for the author of the website is to pray that his blindness will be cured by the Holy Spirit, for he knows not whom he mocks. Indescribable, uncontainable, You placed the stars in the sky and You know them by name. You are amazing God All powerful, untamable, Awestruck we fall to our knees as we humbly proclaim You are amazing God. Chris Tomlin "Indescribable"
This Rockwood is very funny in the light of what is happening over in Richmond at Microsoft...Sales of all their software seems not to be meeting expected targets world wide... I wonder if Ubuntu may have had a hand in that as well as the unwillingness of users to move over to Vista with the resultant hardware expenses that it entails? Sometimes it pays to listen to what the customer wants and not what you think he needs...Long live the Penguin! I have recently bought an Asus Eee PC, running Linux on a 2 Gig solid state disk! I can surf the net, connect via Skype, get E-mail, do spreadsheets, run presentations and write letters... what more do you need if you are an Adventure junkie like me? The neat part is that the little machine weighs less than 1kg with it's mains power supply! Ideal to take on bike trips too. Had fun using it as a digital jukebox as well, plug in my USB external drive and all my music can be played as well. Will be taking it with us on our Argentina Adventure as well... Come to think of it, this baby has more power than the first Mainframe I worked on... amazing... "Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vaccuum tubes and perhaps weigh 1.5 tons." Unknown, Popular Mechanics, March 1949
Shrek the KLR650 that is... today is the anniversary of me saying, "The Green one is mine!" and signing on the dotted line... So around 11AM MD popped around to my office and we took a coffee break... then we decided to take Shrek for a Birthday Ride to Hoopstad to visit friends of MD's. First thing was to but on the tankbag and pop the warm gear in the topbox and fetch MD... when I arrived she was already ATGATTed. Did not take any pics on the way but what we did next made up for that, here we are about to go Offroad in a diffrent way! The combine is a factory on wheels, with all the latest data gathering electronics, here we are being shown how much yield the particular stretch of maize is giving, this information is then used with soil samples to determine next seasons nutrient dose. The business end... First of two loads we saw ofloaded in the run across the field... Taking a break before the next run... yeah... parts of the dirt road to the farm looked like this field track... but we beat the Sand Monster. Off into the sunset goes the Monster... Then we saw the momma of all tractors! Showing MD the controls and GPS assisted computer guidance system... similar to that on a cruise missile... but being used to literaly guide the plough... all the operator has to do is drive it to a particular field, do the first row, set the system and wait for it to finish the back row to turn it around again. All this with a 10mm precision. The newer ones do the turning around as well I hear... who needs a driver! Shrek patiently waiting for us to finish guzzling coffee, tart and flapjacks! Typical Free State Platteland hospitality! And by the time we got to Bultfontein it was getting dark... arrived back home just after seven after a wonderful ride and visit. Nice way to celebrate 12 months with Shrek! Wow... what an amazing twelve months this has been, not without it's sorrows but nothing unsurmountable, just like when you hid a rough spot while riding you apply some power, the same way when life had rough spots we were able to draw on God's power and make it to the other side... it would have been a much less rewarding trip without His guiding hand I believe. "For believe me: the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and greatest enjoyment is - to live dangerously." Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 - 1900) This is my WD label... for all my future bike blogs.
Today's APOD is amazing! This is now being named Hanny's Voorwerp. At the moment no one is very sure what it is, some think a cloud of energized gas, wich is of galactic proportions by the way, or a Green Dragon? It shows that there are still many things to be discovered in the Universe. Every time something like this happens I am reminded who created it all and how AWESOME God is. If you think you have the eye and the time, register at the Galaxy Zoo and do some identification. I have... I leave you with these thoughts on the Universe... There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened. Douglas Adams (1952 - 2001)
The creator of the universe works in mysterious ways. But he uses a base ten counting system and likes round numbers. Scott Adams (1957 - )
If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. Carl Sagan (1934 - 1996)
Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine. Sir Arthur Eddington (1882 - 1944)
Love be still Love be sweet Don't you dare Change a thing I want to photograph you with my mind To feel how I feel now all the time
[CHORUS] Say that you'll stay Forever this way Forever and forever That we'll never have to change Don't move Don't breathe Don't change Don't leave And promise me Say you'll stay We'll stay This way
I get afraid Don't think ahead Lets just stay This way in bed Feels so good inside your arms Home is everywhere you are
[CHORUS]
Don't move Don't breathe Don't change Don't leave Promise me We'll always be This kind, this sweet This good to me Promise me We'll always be "We try to grab pieces of our lives as they speed past us. Photographs freeze those pieces and help us remember how we were. We don't know these lost people but if you look around, you'll find someone just like them." Gene McSweeney, Grey Water Photography, 06-04-2006
