Installing Hyper-white Running Lights on an SV650

It’s been a long time coming, but the set of Hyper-white running lights I bought a few months ago are finally installed. Unlike the Hyper-lite brake lights, the front running lights weren’t so simple to install: the wiring was more involved and I needed to make some brackets because the lights were going to be mounted low on the forks.

It’s good having a friend in the machine shop business, because he came through for me with some wonderful custom brackets that would attach to the front brake calipers. It took a little while to have them made since he did the work in his spare time, but you can’t beat free. Unfortunately, it didn’t take long before I ran into a big issue.

To give you an idea of the problem, here’s a picture of the right front caliper:

And here’s a picture of the left front caliper:

See anything different? There’s a small “nubbin” on the left caliper mount which holds a clip in place for the speedometer sensor cable. This nubbin would turn out to be quite an inconvenience.

My friend Scott originally designed a bracket from measurements taken from the right mount. He then mirrored the drawing for the left mount. He sent me the drawings to review before he actually made the pieces, and guess what, I checked them against the right mount again, not realizing that the left mount would require a cutout for the pesky bolt in the way. D’OH!!

The brackets turned out beautiful. The right one fit perfectly, but there was no way the left one was going to work without some major help. I didn’t want to impose on my friend any more than I already had, so I figured I’d try cutting out a hole in the bracket myself. To the Dremel!

Here’s the result of a couple hours of painstaking grinding and filing:

That right bracket sure is pretty, like a purebred dog. I turned the left one into an ugly mutt. But in the end, they’re all just dogs, right? Anyway, it wouldn’t be the first time I made something ugly that worked. Viva la Dremel!

My wrench made short work of loosening the 14mm front caliper mounting bolts, and soon the brackets were on. Purebred first:

And then the mutt:

Then it was time to install the lights.

The running light kit contains two LED arrays, a switch assembly, two long wires, three Posi-Tap, and one Posi-Twist connector. There were no instructions in the bag (by mistake, probably) but you can download the instructions from the Hyper-lites website.

The first step was sticking the LED arrays to the brackets. I wiped down the outer surface of each bracket with rubbing alcohol. When that was dry, I removed the backing on the included double-stick tape and stuck each LED array to a bracket, like so:

After the LEDs were mounted, it was time to wire things up. The first thing I do when installing electrical farkles is test to make sure everything works. This involves connecting all the components together using test leads. If you do any electrical work on your bike, save yourself a lot of trouble and buy a set of test leads like these ones from RadioShack.

It may look a mess, but this is where I start to figure out exactly where each wire needs to go, what splices need to be made, and how long each wire should be. It was immediately clear that some of the steps in the instructions weren’t going to be necessary on the SV, specifically the ones involving the two long “extra” wires with barrel crimp connectors. The lights and the switch assembly already had so much excess wire that the additional wire was rendered unnecessary. Good thing too, because I try to avoid crimp connectors at all costs. By skipping the “extra” wires, I also eliminated a second wire to ground. (The instructions show a red wire running to hot, a black wire to ground, and a green wire also to ground.)

I’m sure this is as clear as mud, so here’s a diagram showing how I wired things up.

I used a rubber band to secure the switch assembly to the handlebar near the left grip. It’s much easier to keep your wiring neat when you have your electrical farkles and their related parts like switches, resistors, etc. roughly in their final places. Everything doesn’t have to be permanently mounted — just close. Then you can route your wires and cut them to the perfect length while keeping important things in mind like

• Can you close the seat (battery cover, fairing, etc) over the battery compartment?
• Can the gas tank be lifted and lowered without buggering up the works?
• Are any wires in the way of moving parts?
• Are any wires near hot spots (engine, exhaust, etc)?
• Can you turn the handlebars from full lock to full lock?

But I digress. With the switch in place, it was time to splice things together. I routed the white and brown wires from each LED array up the forks following the existing brake lines. Then, I soldered the white wires to the grey wire from the switch.

My new toy. I <3 presents!

Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of the splice covered with heatshrink. Next, I used the included Posi-Tap to connect the brown wires together and tap into the green (ground) wire.

With that finished, the next step was to route the red and green wires from the switch assembly back toward the battery under the seat. I hooked the red and green wires up to my DIY distribution block which is keyed off the ignition.

Once I confirmed that everything worked as it should, all that was left was securing all the wiring in place with small zipties and putting the seat back in place.

I’ve had the Hyper-whites on my SV for over two weeks now and they are awesome. They throw a surprising amount of light for running lights, and Stacey mentioned that they’re much brighter than the headlight. Best of all, they sip electricity like a dutchess at a tea party. It remains to be seen how much the three point lighting will affect the traffic I encounter during rides, but right now, the Hyper-whites get a 5 twisty rating:

Tagged as: Motorcycling