BMW 1200R Installation

[Fluke]

Matt made this great guide of fitting Bullets to his new BMW 1200.









Each bullet LED is a very small 60 lumen LED that is sealed in a plastic   housing. There's about 26" of a 16ga wire pair coming out of the bottom of each   light. Since LEDs draw so little power, these are reputed to be CANBUS-friendly.   Notably, the LED bullet lights did not come with any Posi-tap Line Tap   connectors, which is my preferred mounting method, so I ordered four 12-18ga   Posi-tap Line Tap connectors from cosmicleds.com.



Without a lot of body plastic on our bikes, there aren't a whole lot of mounting options unfortunately. I wanted to get the LED bullet lights as low and as far   forward as possible, so I decided to mount them to the top of the outside of the   front wind deflectors. I thought about mounting them inside the front wind   deflectors, but a) I didn't want to interrupt the flow of air onto the oil   cooler and b) I wanted the lights to be as open as possible since they are pretty dang bright from just about any angle.

To get the lights lined up   perfectly horizontally, I had my dad (who assisted with the entire procedure) sit on the bike while I used a level to make several reference marks.



Now here was the mentally challenging part. First I removed the two wind   deflectors for easier accessibility. Then I consumed one Fat Tire amber ale to   get my courage up to drill two 7/32" holes through the wind deflectors. The   holes are for routing the wire. My overall objective was for the installation to   be more or less invisible, so all the wires and posi-tap connectors are   concealed on the finished product. Here's my dad modeling the new Dremel tool   used for the procedure, and the finished result:



Next I ran the wiring through the new holes in the wind deflector, then I removed the sticky backing from the LED bullet lights and carefully lined the lights up before emplacing them on each wind deflector.



Again, keeping in mind that I wanted the installation to be invisible, I routed the wire behind the stanchion on the wind deflector to get the wire in position to run behind the lip of the front fender. There's a lip back there in case you   didn't notice.





The next step was to re-mount the wind deflectors back on the bike.



Here's a shot of the routing of the wire behind the lip.



At the apex of the fender just beneath the fork mount there's a small pocket   that is where I used the first two of my posi-tap connectors to connect the left   bullet LED to the right one. This was by far the most difficult part of the   procedure. I had removed a good 18" of wire off the left bullet LED so that I   wouldn't have a lot of leftover wire to tuck away somewhere on the bike. The   posi-taps were just a skosh too big to slip through the gap between the top of   the fender and the fork brace, so I had to do all the posi-tapping underneath   the fork brace. It was a pain in the butt, but the posi-taps give a very solid   connection and once the threads of the posi-taps bit, they stayed and the wiring   was very well secured. I supposed I could have removed the front brakes, then   the wheel, then the fender and done it perfectly, but that's a bit beyond my   level of expertise and there wasn't enough Fat Tire in the house to make me that   brave, so I went this route.





I then secured the wires that ran from each bullet LED to the post that houses   the fender screws underneath the fender using zip ties. This served to really snug up the loose wiring and 'suck' he posi-taps under the fork brace. The whole   wiring assembly pretty much disappeared.





Next I ran the single wire for the LED bullet lights up the same run as the ABS   wire, zip-tying the wire every few inches. I then drilled a thrid hole (augh!)   through the back of the headlamp housing and ran the LED bullet light wires   through so I could posi-tap them to the small "standlicht" or that very-dim-bulb-that-comes-on-but-serves-no-useful-purpose-here-in-America light.




then reassembled the headlamp housing, trimmed up all the zip-ties.   Here's the   final product:

[Fluke]

And, check it out: no CANBUS issues!