Rear Light Reliability Modification Not pretty.

[WTSDS]

OK, I do a few 10 hour highway trips and in winter that means leaving well before dawn (often in fog ) and arriving after dark. Several  times I found myself without a rear light at the end of a journey dammit and very thankful not to have been hit from behind by a truck.

One time it was because the tabs on the beertray had broken and the globe filaments were smashed from the shaking, and a coupla times the copper thingies weren't pressing on the globe contacts hard enough. Then the plastic housing holding the copper thingies broke and it was time for a proper fix.

Bought an auto 2 pin globe holder. Cut three shapes from thin stainless steel plate. Dremeled into the reflector until could push the holder through and drilled two holes for mounting bolts. The other two plates now hold the tail light assembly in place.

 

Then got to thinking it would be comforting to be CERTAIN that the rear light was working at all times.

Got a length of fibreoptic cable and mounted that inside the rear light pointing at the globe. The other end is next to the ignition switch and shows me a dull glow when the rear light is on, and a brighter glow when the brake light is on.

[stopintime]

Under those conditions you do what you have to do 

LOVE the fiberoptic cable idea

[He Man]

why not just get an LED taillight? I also have a good amount of reflective material on my bag and jacket.

[uglyducky]

why not just get an LED taillight? I also have a good amount of reflective material on my bag and jacket.

+1 - i had the stock tail light on my 05 s4r and no matter what i did to dampen vibration the running light would periodically go out.  i'd have cars pulling up next to me yelling that they couldn't see me.  went the next day and bought an integrated LED tail light. 

[He Man]

i just bought my 2nd motodynamic light. The last one broke off, this one is getting the rubber grommet +bushing treatment to reduce vibration .i wish this thing was made of steel or something. Theres too many pot holes in NYC!

[dropstharockalot]

+1 to the LED.  I went through a bunch of filament bulbs when I was commuting 80mi round trip... I carried spares, but that wouldn't help me when one went out mid-commute.  My integrated LED is holding up to all kinds of miles w/ no outages so far (knock on wood).

Great idea with the f/o cable, though.  Very cool.

[bikepilot]

Nice work!  My old honda ('85 VF500) had a light on the dash to provide notice if the tail light quit working, very smart, wish all bikes had something like that.  Your fiber optic setup does the same and is probably more reliable 

[Drunken Monkey]

I remember seeing a fiber optic set-up on a guy's Bimota back in the 80s, very trick and fool-proof

My solution has been to run two sets of wires to two separate tail lights, each wired to both filaments. This way it won't fail unless both sets of wires disconnect or all 4 filaments burn out

But I'm using a motogadget m-unit which lets me vary the brightness when the brakes are applied, rather than light up the brake light (low for normal lighting, high for brakes)