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Debulking the Valkyrie
AN OXYMORON MADE REAL
NightMare is leaner and meaner than ever!
By Chet Walters

Click any picture to see enlargement Click resulting picture to see next Use backspace key for previous	MATERIALS Badlands Illuminator module Kuryakyn Small Universal mount Silver Bullets (2305) Rattlebars Rad Top Kit Tail/Turn Converters plate frame (#9167) Kuryakyn Backing Plate1 2 3 Ness 12-102 Triple LED's (#CYC-032) Signal Dynamics LED (For VTX FRONT) 2 Standard Duty Relays or Radio Shack "Auto Relay" ($5.98) 1 in-line fuse holder with 15 amp fuse
	UH! OH! What's happening here? Well, to start... disassemble .\ Front end to get chromed by H&R Plating. They can do yours too!

Phase one - the rear end. This is a the sum total of all the lights that will be on the rear of the bike. SMALL Kuryakyn Small Universal mount Silver Bullets (2305) are mounted "visor in" under the fender rails. They look like little rocket engines back there. Very clean and non bulky (shown here with amber lenses and these come with interchangeable lenses - clear, red, amber). Halogen bulbs from the track lighting section of Home Depot can be used (only $7.50 per -- see below) and come in various wattages (20 - 35 - 50). For these SMALL bullets, can't use 50 and the 35 watters are too bright too so these are equipped with 20 watters. Holes were drilled in the fender rails for mounting with supplied 3/8" bolt. The bolt was cut to length and the edges smoothed so it would not hurt the wires. Added a little shrink wrap where the wire strikes the bolt for extra protection. Just screw the bolt in and figure how long to cut it for your application. (NOTE: Kury silver bullets (2303) now come with a no visor bezel and you can get a visor in whatever orientation that suits your application)

Current plate frame was merely bolted to the fender over the existing signal cluster rubber grommet left in place. Holes were drilled through the Ness Tech 12-102 flat backing plate and carriage bolts run through the backing plate into the orignal holes in the fender with nuts applied right where they used to be for the entire signal/license assembly which was discarded. The lighted plate frame is (#9167) Kuryakyn for only $35. Signal Dynamics LED is hung offa piece of stainless which is double stick taped to the back of the plate and the LED is double sticked to the stainless. Triple LED's (#CYC-032) on each side are double stuck to the plate back and are hooked up to glow all the time but the ground wire is run to the HOT wire of each signal so that they blink inversely with the signals (when the signal goes hot, the LED loses "ground" and goes off).

The wiring is accomplished using a Badlands Illuminator module which makes the bullets act as running lights, brake lights and turn signals. Very bright. The Badlands module is placed upside down under the seat nestled between the tool box/battery box mounts in the rear. This yields a compact installation and easy access to the necessary connections under the right side cover for the rear fender harness. Click here to go to the wiring diagram.

Closeup picture of the small bullet mounted on the fender rail. A ½" hole was drilled in the rail at an angle and the Bullet mounting bolt was shortened. The edges were coated with Plasti-Kote® Clear Touch Up paint #3001 and a 1/4"ID x 1/8" O-ring was used to cover the gap produced by the flat surface of the Bullet and the curved surface of the fender rail. A simple lock washer on the inside served to correct the flat bolt head mating with the curved inner fender rail.

Shown here with LeatherLyke bags and also the light blinking. Very interesting and very bright. These lights tuck in very nicely in the gap between the fender and the LeatherLyke bags and are surprisingly visible up to about 20° laterally. These small bullets will also fit in the gap between the fender and the stock Honda hard bags but I have not experimented with visibility on that kind of installation for obvious reasons. YMMV

Debulking! OOOPS! Have I gone too far????!!! Front end gets chromed by H&R Plating. They can do yours too!

Since the elimination of the Cobra Light Bar meant the loss of the turn signals and marring the newly chromed fork tubes with stock signal mounts was out of the question, Kury silver bullets mounted to the radiator sides was to be the new front turn signal solution. They are mounted where the molding "hole" is under the reflector which puts them at the narrow part of the radiator underneath the side covers making room for the bolt heads and wiring.

Thankfully, Kury supplies good long heat resistant silicon coated wiring with the Silver Bullets. Here, the wires are run along the top of the radiator, under the frame then into the main harness into the headlight. The runs along the radiator tops are covered afterwards with a Rattlebars Rad Top Kit making for a very neat look. Grounding the lights was done with little pigtails that merely hook to the radiator side cover bolts. The side cover bolt holes are covered with ¾" allen screw caps.

These function well with both the big windshield and mini light bar lamp configurations detailed below. They are wired with Tail/Turn Converters from Lazer Star (mounted in the nacelle as shown) so the single filament bulbs can act as both running lights and turn signals. They are fairly bright, but the modules seem not to function as well as the Badlands item for the rear. The lights are a little dimmer than they should be and you can only run 20Watt lamps in them. I have built an alternative module for my VTX which uses relays and costs only about $10. See the note at the end of this page for more information.

Unfortunately, the use of these front modules and the Badlands rear module causes the stock turn signal flasher to go into "bulb out" mode and the signals flash at double rate. One solution was to add a 35 Watt stock bulb to each circuit, but that would leave one figuring out how not to show the light from this also fragile bulb. Final solution was to put a pair of 10 Ohm 10 Watt wire wound resistors to ground on each of the signal circuits to put enough load on the line so that "bulb out" was not a problem. See note at the end of this page for more information.

A "mini" light bar was made with the stock Hondaline lower WS bracket and a couple of Kuryakyn SMALL Silver Bullets with 35 Watt spots. This pic also gives a good view of the chromed TBR triple clamp and the fork tubes. Note here how the stock mirrors are merely flipped over 180° to reduce the "dumbo ears" look that plagues the Valkyrie "beach" handlbars with stock mirrors. I have not found any custom mirrors that match the excellent view that the stock mirrors provide and this orientation actually improves the view and the look!

The mini light bar bullets were mounted with fabricated brackets to the stock lower WS bracket bar and remove easily for installation of the big Hondaline Sail for cold weather riding (see below). They are "self adjusting" and when mounted, are automatically aligned. The wires simply unplug and the lamps require only a 10mm wrench to remove.

The mini light bar bullets lamps can be obtained from many sources for about $6 - $7.00. Home Depot, Lowe's, Christmas Stores (year round ones), some hardware stores and any lighting shop that carries track lighting. Just look for 12v lights in the proper wattages. I perfer spots since floods often don't put out much light up front, but they do light up the road nearby.

Here she is in "touring/cold weather" mode. The Hondaline has mounted with simple right angle brackets on the lower windshield bolts, 4½" lamps which replace the Mini Light Bar rather nicely for a more "bulked up" look that goes with the big shield. These lamps simply plug in where the mini light bar bullets once did. Switching for both the light bar and these lamps is accomplished using the kill switch as detailed on my Kill Switch Page.

BELOW CAN BE SEEN SEVERAL OTHER VIEWS OF THE DE-BULK

On Hondas, when you put on your turn signal, the running light on that side is switched off. Put on a blinker and the running light wire goes cold so the relay for that side gets "untriggered" and reverts to "off" hence cuts the steady running light current from the battery through terminal 87 and then feeds current to the lamp from the intermittent turn signal circuit through the normally on terminal (87a) of the relay. You have a blinker! Very bright. Very noticeable. This circuit costs only about $10 to build and will work if you just leave the rear signals as stock too. This also eliminates the "bulb out" problem discussed above so the extra wirewound 10ohm resistors are not necessary.

But, the "running light out when signal on" feature of Honda's signals allows you to also wire them up more simply as shown at the left usind diodes (diodes pass current only one way, the banded side won't let any current through). I have had diode's burn up and cause me grief. But I was using lighter diodes (RS 276-1114). At the suggestion of HonDiego of the VTXOA, I have installed more stout Radio Shack epoxy rectifiers (RS 276-1144) which seem to work well. They get hot so keep them away from vital organs. I have not tested these yet on a full day's ride but I suspect they will work ok. Problem is, there's no way really to switch these off if you need to get some jiuce to start your bike because the Kury silver bullets do not have isolated ground. To wire the bullets with isolated ground, you need to run an extra wire inside the light and pic up the ground there, isolating it, and bringing it out to the switch.

However, there was one problem with the Badlands module used for the rear signals in conjunction with this setup. When the turn signal circuit was hot on one side, there was feedback between the circuits through the blinker indicator and both the rear lights blinked weakly as if there were "fourways" on. Not good! As you can see by the left side of the drawing, the blinker indicator on both the Valkyrie Standard/Tourer models and also the VTX is fed by both signal circuits. When the right signal circuit goes hot, the left (cold) circuit acts as ground and blinks the indicator lamp. When the left signal goes hot, the reverse is true. Unfortunately, there was enough feedback current through the bulb on the VTX that it confused the Badlands module. The solution was to eliminate the feedback but preserve the blinker indicator. The right part of the drawing shows how to do this using Radio Shack diodes (diodes pass current only one way so there is no feedback) and this has the bonus of making the blinker indicator brighter since it removes the filaments of the blinker bulbs in the round circuit. Ground LT BLUE to any GREEN wire or the frame and then feed the ORANGE wire from both the LT BLUE and the ORANGE using diodes.

For more information on relays and how they work, check Extra Horns How To

For more information on blinker indicators and how they work, check Extra Blinker Indicators

NOTE ON BULB OUT: In wiring to disable "bulb out" you must simulate the resistance of the OEM 35 watt signal filament. To do this, wire a pair of 10 Ohm 10 Watt wire wound resistors to ground on each of the signal circuits to put a 5 ohm load on each line so that "bulb out" will not be a problem. These are Radio Shack 271 - 132 and cost only 99¢ for a pair. Good cheap two dollar solution. These do get warm so don't put them anywhere near plastic or other wiring. I hung mine down by the swingarm behind the frame. One could just wire a pair of these between the signal circuits, but you risk the problem of "feedback" as discussed in the above paragraph. Note, the actual resistors don't look like the ones in the drawing. They are square ceramic hickeys (that's the teck term for them) about two inches long.

One final note: You can wire your single filament bulb for signals and running lights like this keeping the ground isolated. This is a quikie and note that if you have STOCK SIGNALS IN THE BACK AND DO IT THIS WAY, YOU WILL MELT YOUR REAR SIGNALS. If you have Kury Bullets back there, you're just fine except they will be very bright. Might wanna use 20 watt bulbs from the hardware store track lighting section.

Thanks go out to Tim Skelton who provided the first instructions on mounting a license plate this way. Also to be credited are DragBars Christian for letting me get a good close look at Kury Silver Bullets in Daytona and the San Diego crew for a good look at clean rear ends.

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Questions? Contact Chet at Chetspages@rattlebars.com