Plasma Cannon

Shedding Light on the Situation

Risers in place; came Sunday morning and some sunshine to warm through an otherwise dank day. Fresh with success and eager to prove the spanners and sockets are good for more than hammering into rounded-out bolts, and that I have sufficient finesse in matters mechanical when put to the fore, I looked at Shadowfax and promised not to hurt him; if I could help it.

We'd rehearsed the cowling (fairing, to we Brits) removal including the taking out the bottom cowl (belly pan), mirrors (mirrors), and inner cowl (little bit inside the big bit under the handlebars) but nothing could have prepared me for the ease with which everything came off and piled on the front lawn like some posh Steptoe's yard.

An organised workshop area - Steptoe's Yard!

Fitting

Then the tricky bit. I created a cradle out of zip/cable-ties in which I formed a "bomb" out of the shiny ballast, 23,000 Volts box, and big connecting plug and socket, which fitted within the triangular sub frame in front of where the right-hand-side glove box sits when the fairing is in place. It was based on the example at the following link(LINK.

The HID power bomb in place in its cradle

I had some trouble gathering my imagination together to fit everything in place AND to leave sufficient length to reach the battery; one little fuse-box looking thingy had to be slipped behind some coil-looking gadget on Shadowfax as it had nowhere else to go. I think the suppliers (although providing an excellent dispatch service) should consider building a library of bike-specific instructions if the kits are to be claimed bike-specific in the manner they are. A minor criticism, but I won't compromise when it comes to an idiot like me following someones instructions; to their credit they do mention getting the advice of a qualified electrician but I'm too tight and proud to consider purchasing that type of aide!

The mad science of my creation

I had a lot of trouble extracting the H4 halogen bulb from its housing. I couldn't figure out the coiled spring and catch arrangement as, even with the freaking fairings removed I still couldn't see the device and certainly received loads of little bruises to the back of my hand trying to access the space. Honda, we haven't all got little House Elves over here like you've seen on Harry Potter, and nor can we shrink and grow at a whim like on Alice in Wonderland. We're pretty average humans and need the ergonomics of the same - PLEASE, consider user access to such simple tasks!! In the event, a piece of plastic that clamped the spring in place snapped off. Ah.

The workaround was to unscrew the clam's screw a touch and use it to jam the spring into. Luckily it engaged like this first time - I think very luckily and advise no one to rely on the technique. Being Honda, I reckon I'd need a new lamp assembly to put it right properly? That's be about £300, I guess, too? (Bastards, Honda!)

Finito

Anyway, by 3pm (my deadline to get to a funeral) I had this little project whipped and even had time to rearrange the fairing bolts to work more efficiently (where so many are missing). I also inspected the Left-hand-side middle cowl, which definitely sits haphazardly away from its true intended location and found the last mechanic to take this piece off had obviously given up doing a thorough job and simply used a longer bolt to cover its being 2cm proud of the engine guard. A job for the next weekend, perhaps? (And doubtless, another £6 for the bolt (Honda!) although my SiL (Nikki) says she knows of a company in Aldershot that make bolts to order down to the pitch of the thread and everything - worth investigating.)

The plasma cannon in "Protect" mode

Brave little soldier

Next, I got really poorly and had to wait to Tuesday night to see the bulb in operation at night (see above). It's quite bright but the road picture is not as it should be. I'm putting this down to the light source's position in the lamp's lens affecting the reflector's focal length. I may try to shim it, one day, but the light is so bright and day-light white in front of the bike it makes few odds. Sure, I can't see much further to the front (as I'd hoped for) but in the oncoming headlamps I can still see the road - something that is rare with the halogen lamps where any light source from the 5th moon of Jupiter can dazzle it out and leave me guessing where even the next white line is.

A Battery of Unfortunate Events

Nikki's rear brake caliper had disengaged with a brake pad and bent it during her trip down to us for the weekend. We followed a similar catalogue of needing and trying to source a hex-drive that would fit her GPZ-600 from Halfords (not cheap, either) and a brake-bleeding kit, which wasn't expensive, but seemed a lot of money for a tube and a pot! As it soon got dark I used Shadowfax's Plasma Canon to give a slice of daylight to the situation.



20-minutes later I noticed the lights were flickering at a 1-per-second rate: odd? Yep, the battery had discharged fully and ran out of energy to turn his starter over. Back to removing a side panel and setting up the poor stricken Shadowfax to receive Amps IV via jump leads from Nikki's bike. Pah!

Sorted. (As my condescending hero Gordon Ramsey, would say).