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R1200GS LED Turn Signals

PostPosted: Sun Jun 06, 2010 8:26 pm
by BobFV1
This is sort of half ride report, well more "non-ride" report and half a tech/gear write-up, so I will put it here.

Yesterday, Saturday June 5, was bittersweet. The plan was to get up, ride North to attend the "Square Route Rally" for the day, then ride home for a barbecue with my girls (wife, daughter, dog). Well, I got out in the heat and humidity about 0900 and decided that before I go, I could quickly throw on the BMW aftermarket LED flashers I purchased from MAXBMW this week. Seemed like a good idea when I saw them on the fiche:

http://www.maxbmwmotorcycles.com/fic...aspx?vid=52022

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Didn't look too complicated, but of course there were no instructions provided. I was able to find step-by-step instructions in a PDF online - the part numbers didn't match, but these instructions worked fine for me:

http://www.bohling-eisele.de/PDF_Dow...08_english.pdf

Who needs instructions, how hard could it be? Not quite plug-and-play. My research told me that the aftermarket units had resistors built in to the sockets to prevent them from throwing a CANBUS fault, so that means I was going to have to work back in the wiring harness on each signal, cut the OEM past the socket, splice the new socket in to the wiring harness, then install the LED flashers and plug them in to the new sockets. Apparently, if you do it right, and you are lucky, it will not throw a CANBUS fault and you will not need to take it to the dealer to get the ZFE reflashed, or whatever it is they do. Unlike the illustration in the fiche, the kit came with new plug receptacles to splice in to the harness.

Starting in front, it was soon apparent that to get at the harness, the side plates, tank covers, and beak all needed to be removed - it's not an RT, but the debeaking is not really fun to do. The replacement kit comes with plug receptacles with crimp connectors, some ingenious, pre-cut shrink-tubing with heat-activated glue to make a nice seal around the crimp splice, and an assortment of cable ties and bodywork doo-dads to attach them to the bike. All that bodywork removal, crimping, heating, splicing, taping and reassembly took me a couple of hours for the fronts. The LED lights have a cable with a plug that goes in to the provided receptacle.

The rears looked easier, drop the tailpiece (which I have had off already to install my P3Lights brake LED's), dig out the wiring harness, replace the OEM plugs with the new resistor plugs and close her up. Again, I am such a fat-finger weekend warrior, the rears took me a couple of hours too. In my defense - I had to get way up under the rear wheel well, peel back a lot of that OEM fabric tape, and do some crimping in close quarters. At the end of the job, the last crimp, I broke the provided crimp terminal, so I got out the trusty soldering gun and did a nice job on it - probably should have just soldered them all!

Got it all together, turned on the bike an Voila! - everything works fine with no CANBUS issues - hooray! I didn't mean for this job to ruin my whole Saturday, though, because it was 1530 when I finished (with lunch and some work phone calls thrown in), too late to make it up to the Square Route Rally and back for my dinner date with wife and daughter. Oh well - I have a really unique-looking GS now, and I am told I did a good job grilling the chicken!

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Re: R1200GS LED Turn Signals

PostPosted: Fri Dec 23, 2011 3:14 pm
by marcoue
Hi! Great info!

Any way you could correct the links... They don't seam to work! It would be very useful to access them!

Thanks in advance!