License plate light.
I shopped around for license plate lights today. After a lot of hunting, the folks at Lone Star BMW found something that would work. There were four problems though. It was chrome, it cost $20, it would take a week to get in, and it was chrome.
I spent $10 at Fry's electronics for some overpriced white LED's and resistors, and machined some housings for them out of black Delrin. They work, and the electronics are sealed in place with E6000 glue. They'll be ready in the morning. I think that they'll be quite nice.
But, when I put them on to test them, the taillight converter that I was using to integrate the brake and turn signal lights stopped working. This is the third one I've been through. The first two didn't work out of the box. This third one has got maybe half an hour of use during testing. I don't know why I'm going through them like this, but am starting to suspect that there's an electrical issue on the bike that is causing them to fail.
So I need to rethink the tail light setup. I have ideas in that department, I'll have to do some testing and see what works.
The headlight is coming along. I would have made more progress, but the first two auto parts stores I visited didn't have their loan-a-tool tubing bender in stock. I gave up looking because it was hot and I was tired. I'll have another go at finding one tomorrow, and then I'll be able to use it to bend aluminum 1/4" bar stock to make the headlight bracket. Since the bracket will be visible, I want to use the tool to make nice looking bends rather than just putting the metal in the vise and hitting it with a BFH.
