Featured Changing Headlight On Bonneville T100

I recently had a terrifying tarmac kissing experience. A cyclist crossed in front of me, I had to jump on brakes, it was a manky wet December day with leaves everywhere, and the bike literally slipped from under me. I jumped at the last second, and incredibly escaped with only a badly grazed knee.

The bike was also surprisingly in not too bad a shape. It slipped along on its right side, mostly on the exhaust, brake pedal, handle bar and headlight. I actually rode it back home! All in working order. I don't mind the scrapped exhaust (aftermarket TEC), pedal and handlebar ends; I'll eventually get around replacing them:


The headlight was a bit more problematic, in the sense that the right side bracket was bent, so the light points sideways, and after a couple of weeks began rusting. I had to change it:



I got some second-hand original brackets from eBay, and a lovely matte black headlight:



Installing it is relatively straight forward, just a lot of work, as you have to remove the forks to install the brackets. Do one fork at a time. This helps a lot in keeping track of the height and alignment of the forks.



There is a lot of cabling stuffed into the headlight! I used colour matching tape to label each of the connectors. There's actually little chance of mixing them (apart from the indicators), but it's still good practice.



The changing of the brackets is a bit fiddly, as you have to reinsert the forks while keeping the rubber seals aligned. Do it slowly, twisting the forks and moving them in small round movements as you insert them. Keeping looking from the top. It's a bit tricky but doable.

Another issue I had was switching the ignition assembly to the new brackets. If at all possible, only unscrew the two external screws (the ones with hex heads - one is hard to reach). Avoid removing the black lid:



I removed it, and watched in horror as bearings slid out of it onto the floor. It turned out not to be a great deal. Make sure not to lose any of the bearings. In my bike (2011 T100), there are three bearings and two springs. The placement of the springs is pretty obvious. As for the bearings, the largest one sits at the bottom (you can see it still sticking to the assembly in the photo above). The two other bearings sit on top of the springs.



There were a couple of other problems. The new headlight does not have a connection for the presence light, so I had to remove it; it's pretty useless anyway, and I have a power saving H4 module installed, which only turns on the light after you flick the high/low beam switch. There is also a bit less space inside the bowl for all the cables, so a lot of fiddling was required to stuff everything in there.

I'm pretty happy with the end result!

 

I want to see it painted, painted black
Black as night, black as coal
I want to see the sun, blotted out from the sky
I want to see it painted, painted, painted, painted black

 

He did stop. Just a bloody kid, shaking even more than me. Once I figured out that I wasn't badly injured and Panda wasn't badly broken either, I let him go.