Thursday, March 31, 2011

Auxiliary Modulating Brake Light

What a mouthful that is.

But that's what Canada Post delivered right on time this morning. That, and much more.

This post will be all about installing the AdmoreLighting Mini LED Light Bar on my Vespa.

On the weekend I moved this project along by going to Canadian Tire and picking up a trailer wiring harness. Specifically, a Reese 5-pin flat male and female plug set. The reason I need the harness is to allow the Admore to be unplugged. It will be mounted to the bottom of the topcase and unless I include a means of unplugging it, I won't be able to remove the topcase without digging into the scooter to undo wiring, or cutting the wires.

Once I had the Reese wiring harness, I needed to plan out the connections. So here's my plan:
I know, you're intrigued but the plan is so small, you can't make anything out.  If you click on it  you'll get a much better view.

It's now Tuesday, April 12, 2011, and I  finally had a little time to devote to this project.  The first thing I wanted to do was to test the unit to make sure it works, before I launch into the permanent installation.

I began my preliminary test by removing the Vespa's tail light and turn indicator light housings.  Nothing could be easier or quicker.  One screw each for the turn indicators, and two screws for the tail light.  The first thing that became obvious is that my wiring diagram above is correct, but the Vespa wire colors are not quite.  I'll update the diagram with the correct colors before this post is final.

The Admore folks provide really idiot proof wire taps that make tapping into the tail light and turn indicator lights a real breeze.  So that's what I did.  And it worked so flawlessly that I couldn't resist sharing a video of the test with you.  So here it is:
 Here's a photo to show where the Admore unit will be mounted to the Vespa OEM topcase.
I got this modification finished last night, Thursday, April 14, 2011.

I first taped the unit to the topcase then parked the scooter in the street with my car a few car lengths back and sat in the driver's seat to make sure that I was able to see both the original tail light and the new Admore unit.  Once I was satisfied that mounting the unit under the topcase was the right way to go, I set to work dismantling, cutting, stripping, soldering, fishing, connecting, drilling, screwing and re-mantling the whole shooting match.  And there you have it, a really nice safety addition to my Vespa LX150.

What I'm going to do now is write up a project report for the Modern Vespa website and I'll use that to put up a new post here on the blog, with all the kinks worked out.


So you no longer have to continue watching this post, all you need to do is keep a watchful eye out for the final project post.  With a little luck, I'll have that done by Sunday evening. [Ed.: did that by Saturday :) click here to go there]

2 comments:

Unknown said...

David:

Looks like a neat unit. Too bad you couldn't just mount it just below the topbox on the rear rack with bracket. That would enable you to use the modulator without the top box, if you wanted

bob
Riding the Wet Coast

David Masse said...

That's a good point Bob. All I would need is a powder coated mounting bracket to extend from the rear rack to bring the unit even with the back edge of the topcase. Very nice suggestion. I think I'll keep the trailer harness plug connections in the plan as well though. Time will tell as I work this out. I'm really anxious to get the work finished so I can show off the result.

The copyright in all text and photographs, except as noted, belongs to David Masse.