Making Light Work

F&%$ing Honda!

So, there's a tail light out. I pop into Halfords in the weekend and ask for advice - blank stares all round. They sell bike lamps but don't know jiffy about them and have no reference for anything except oil filters. I used the new phone to search Google and came up with the designation of 12V/21 - 5. Yep, Halfords do that one. "Will it fit?" I asked. "Sure, it's a standard motorcycle bulb", replied Halford's hair-dryer technician Sandra.

This evening I took the seat off to get at the tail light. No way to get to it. I unscrew the lamp rose but it does nothing to my access. I get on to the .pdf manual I have on the PC. Shocking...

ST1300 bulb replacement: Instructions

1. Remove rear fender (black mud guard with licence plate (4 x hex bolts; 2 horizontal and too deep for a hex-key to reach, and 2 vertical requiring care using the modified screwdriver with hex-socket fixed not to burn the wrist on the hot exhausts. "Imagine", I said to Ka, who had come out to see what the blue language was all about, "being on the motorway and finding your bulbs have blown and you have to go through this crap - it's worse than a new Peugeot with it's front lamp access through the wheel arch!"

2. Put hand upward from behind the rear tyre into the rear rose cluster; grab lamp socket and rotate anti-clock-wise. Now, something snapped off; a small black tag, or something that is bound to be really important and worth £6000 to replace from a Honda dealer as no-one else stocks it. Have you ever put your hand into something in front of you, from underneath, and tried working out which way a twist anti-clockwise is? Damn difficult, and if it's not I have to wonder where you're getting your practice!

3. Remove offending bulb and inspect - finding it is completely different to the round fitting purchased from Halfords and utterly unrecognisable compared to anything else viewed in the plastic blister packs hanging in the store earlier.

4. Cuss.

5. Apologise to the Mrs for cussing under the kids' bedrooms.

On rational and mature inspection, the bulb is indeed a 12V 21 - 5; it just has a 2-pin flat bayonet arrangement to be awkward.

Tailight bulb, W21-5W STANLEY 12V E4 2DW (Courtesy David Spires)

I think I may order one off the net along with knee pads (needed to keep a grip on the bumpy A31 past Alton where my knees are wearing the tank paint). There's a good deal at David Spires.

Knee pads for Honda

More taxing outcomes

One bit of good news is that I finally got the Oxford licence disc holder apart (bolt by bloody bolt) to fit the new disc in. I may have had the tax for a week, but I could still get pulled by rozzers for not displaying it - no excuses! The main bolt fixing it to the forks has seized and rounded out (cheap) so a little violence was called for to spin the gadget into a position from which to impart encouragement from a small socket (finger-held due to lack of clearance) and smaller hex.

One thing for the Sanya (Phut-Phut); he was easy to maintain and modify. Shadowfax is almost as complicated as a real bloody horse!

Who was in mind for the ST1300 owner? Most are going to be people enthusiastic about riding needing ease of maintenance and long servicing schedule, surely? Does Honda think taking a fairing panel and engine cover off par for the course just to get to the oil filler? Yes, they do. !??%$£!!!