Article And Photos By: Daniel Donley
www.pandemoniumcustomchoppers.com
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t has been a long winter here in Ohio, and as I sit here and write this month’s tech, there’s snow still on the ground outside. Spring is coming, and we all know what that means; we finally get to enjoy our motorcycles. So, what better time than now to get them ready. No sense in waiting until the last minute. Take the time now to do any service or repairs. I don’t know about you, but I am ready for the upcoming riding season. After some of last year’s shenanigans, I realized that I had broken my taillight. Other than that, all I need to do is a full service on my bike for the spring. This LED taillight has served me well for more than 8 years and is extremely popular within the custom motorcycle community. Unfortunately, the failure rate of this taillight is extremely high, so for this month’s tech, I will show you how I got 8 years out of my taillight.
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AApril pril ‘22 - May ‘22 - CYCLE SOURCE MAGAZINE
The taillight that I have on my bike is a reproduction of a Ford Model “A” style light. They make this light for use with incandescent and LED bulbs. From my experience, the failure rate of the incandescent is much higher than the LED, which I will explain in a minute. All these taillights are made from thin stainless steel, which does not get along well with our bikes’ vibrations. Here you can see the S.S. body is cracked and broken beyond repair. This being an LED version, the light still functions as it should. This is why I choose LED over incandescent. LED is much more forgiving to vibrations.