SatNav and Autocom

On Sunday the weather was even better so while I had the panels off already I went about installing the  Garmin SatNav mount and power unit. I also installed my Autocom unit and a bike powered Kenwood radio. I had previously installed all this before on my previous bike so I already had the cabling cut to length and a good idea of where to put everything. As I have previously gone over how I installed this on the other bike, it’s pretty pointless to write it up again so I will post the links to the relevant blog posts below. The only differences to the install this time is I didn’t install the bluetooth module, due to volume issue with the Garmin. Also rather than removing the powerlet socket to get a switched live I instead traced the cables back and spliced into the loom and soldered the cable on. I have also managed to hide the cables and connectors better so it is a much cleaner install this time. Previous knowledge and hindsight is a wonderful thing. When I tested it after the install it sounded much clearer than last time, so maybe the tidier install helped with this. Considering this is the third bike the Autocom has been on I was pleasantly surprised that it is still working perfectly.

Garmin SatNav Install
Garmin Sound Issue
Autocom Install
Revised Garmin Audio Install

Read more...

K1300S New Indicators

As the weather was nice over the weekend and now that I also have the centre stand fitted I decided to do some jobs on the K1300S.  I had decided a while back as the K1300s has so many trick bits that I would add some better looking indicators as well. I had bought the indicators and lenses last year but hadn’t got round to fitting them because of the crap weather we’ve had recently.

For the  front indicators I decided to just fit some nice smoked lenses rather than have the standard amber ones. I got them off Ebay and they are Chinese made but because they are just lenses and have no electrical bits in them I thought it was worth a punt. Well they fit really well for aftermarket ones, the fit isn’t perfect but unless you had the OEM to compare against you wouldn’t notice really. Obviously the original bulbs are clear so I needed to get some amber ones instead. Again Ebay was the easiest place to source these and the Canbus system had no issues with the bulbs I got either.

For the rear indicators I chose to remove the large old style bulbous indicators and instead fit a set of cleaner looking Led indicators. I went for the official BMW indicators as fitted to the front of the K1300R and other BMWs. The front ones are shorter than the rear ones, but I needed them for the K1300S due to the way the luggage is shaped to fit around the standard indicators. The BMW part number is 63 13 8 522 499 and they are £26.60 each. However again I got them off Ebay for a lot less. I got the BMW ones as they are true plug and play and don’t upset the Canbus system either. All I needed to do was to locate the indicator connectors in the rear tail unit and unplug the old ones and plug in the new ones. I had to remove the rear light, rear luggage rack (grab rails on standard setup) and the black plastic cowling to get at them. But once removed actually changing over the indicators was very easy. I am very pleased with the result and I think both sets look better against the white of the bike rather than the OEM bright amber ones.

Read more...