Monday, August 25, 2008

S Fairing Project - The Gauges

In the continuing work involved with fitting out an S fairing onto my 1987 R80, Brigitta, today I received the VDO brand Clock Gauge from summitracing.com. Contrary to their "customer service" information, it did come with a spin-lok mounting ring so installing it was no problem.

Took the fuel tank off, a couple of wire runs later and the clock gauge was mounted snugly on the left hand hold of the S fairing. I discovered I'd put the spin-lok on the voltmeter on incorrectly so I fixed that as well and its snug in the right hand hole of the S fairing.

Both gauges are "lit" so that they're visible at night. The only thing that is just slightly out of place in my eyes is that the Equus Brand Voltmeter's Bezel is not the same as the VDO Brand Clock's Bezel but its minor. Sooner or later (watch it be years now) the voltmeter will croak and I'll replace it with a VDO voltmeter.


Next? Replace the trimmed dashboard with a stock one to provide support to the outlying portions of the windshield, then maybe some plastic trimming of the cut-off portions of the fairing itself for a more "complete" look.

Yes, I understand it'll never stand up to the scrutiny of Airhead Purists but it's my motorcycle and since I've only myself to please when it comes to her, then the purists can just purse their lips disapprovingly all they want! Heck, an R80 is not even supposed to have an S fairing to start with! You gotta love how interchangeable parts appear to be among the many years/models of Airheads that BMW produced!

23OCT08 Update: I had to change the wire that powered the light for the clock to run off the hot feed for the voltmeter. This way, the light for the clock would only come on when the bike was running, and not slowly draining the battery as it was doing.

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