Rear indicators

I know I said I was willing to leave the rear indicators until one of the bulbs went before changing them (which is sensible to fair), with a free Saturday afternoon & the sake of just only £2.49 for a pair of longer type l.e.d jobs, I'm not that tight. So to heck with it may as well get them done.

It's not as straight forward as when changing out the front indicators which just involved plugging in the correct wires in the bullet type connectors & securing them to the fairing with the supplied nut. There was a bit more work involved than I was hoping.

This time around your going to need a bit of basic electrical knowledge.
After unscrewing the indicators you will need to physically cut them off the wires!

Now although it's your basic two wire +- polarity situation, this is the case with my new indicators; with the basic black - and red + wires on the indicators it's not the case with the wires coming off the bike. I think there was a green and even an orange somewhere. And they were completely different colours on the other side. Now of course one's still positive & the other negative, you will just have to find which out by setting the indicators off on the bike and touching the wires to test. You will have to also cut any bullet connectors off the new indicators as they're useless, unless you want to put some female ones on the bikes wires, if you have some to hand? Although I doubt you do. It's pretty low voltage so you don't need to worry about hurting yourself or toasting that unruly Alsatian (or whatever) you have around you.

Once you've got which two wires need to be connected you need to twist them together and solder them. Before you do this make sure you pull the bikes wires out of the hole and attach the indicator fixing nut & thread it back through again otherwise you will have to undo it all and start over.

I'm using a soldering gun here just because it heats up quickly but you can use a basic iron.

Basic wire joining. Now for those that really don't know their arse from their elbow, both separate wires need to be covered so they don't short, you can't just cover it up as it is with tape. I'm using basic insulating electrical tape.

Now, it would've been nice to have some of those heatshrink sleeves to shrink over the top with a heat gun and then it looks all nice etc but I didn't have any.
Anyway not a big deal, I just used more electrical tape and did it the old fashioned way now, straight over the top and pulled it back through to under the seat. This depends on the length of the wires on your new indicators, your join may be outside if they've got short wires.

I personally like to add two tiny cable ties to the ends of the tape just to make sure the tape never unravels overtime (the glue on the tape can go funny in the heat and can come un-done) and I really don't have to worry about it again. Cut the ends off the ties of course and organize the cable nicely. And everything should be ready to go once you've fixed the indicators on by tightening the nuts, not too much pressure or you will crack the plastic.

& that's that, a bit of work but no more changing indicator bulbs again for the sake of pocket change. I have not had to change the flasher relay for one designed specifically to make L.E.D indicators flash here, they work fine both front and back. Some L.E.D indicators stay on, lighted solid & don't flash with some motorcycles, if this is the case you will need to buy a separate relay to make them flash.