Tech: Relocating The Rear Turn Signals

I had started changing the way that the rear of my bike looks like by removing the original rear license plate holder and turn signals. In an earlier post I covered installing a side mounted license plate holder. This will continue from there showing how I relocated the turn signals.

I wanted something better than the original black plastic turn signals. If I was going for the blacked out look they would have worked, but I wanted chrome so I ordered the Harley Davidson Flame turn signal kit.

The kit came with both front and rear lights as well as one electrical connector, zip ties and the metal plugs. It does not come with the mounts (the site does tell you to buy the mounts separately) and correct connector ends for the VRSC even though you can order the lights specifically for the bike (kind of odd to me that it comes with a connector for another bike). I bought the rear mounts and the proper connectors from a local Harley dealer. The connectors are not expensive but it is annoying that when looking on the HD site they do not tell you they have to be purchased or splice old wires, leaving you to make an unexpected trip to a dealer.

The lights are very nice with a small visor built in. I like the way they look.

I decided to use the existing saddle bag mount to mount the lights to. To do this I could use the square hole for the bolt, but needed a hole for the wires to feed through and a hole for the locating pin on the mounts. To do this I made a drill jig out of a piece of steel I had lying around from another project. A drill jig makes it easier to drill holes where you want them.

To make the drill jig I drilled a hole with a letter F drill so I could tap it for a 5/16-18 bolt. The locating pin on the mount is approximately .550" from the bolt hole and the wire is on the other side of the bolt hole, so I marked .550" on both sides of the taped hole on my drill jig and drilled two .280" holes. This is plenty large enough for the wires to feed through and the locating pin will fit into this hole with only a little wiggle room.

Next I bolted the drill jig onto the saddle bag mount. I placed a piece of metal between the saddle mount and the tire. If the drill breaks through and pulls the drill bit through it may pierce the tire, so better safe than sorry. I used the .280" drill bit in my low RPM hand drill and drilled the two holes. After drilling the holes I had to remove the burrs on both sides of the holes. I used a rota burr to clean the back side of the holes and a chamfer bit in a handle to clean up the outside.

When I put the turn signal on, there was a little play due to the square hole being a bit bigger than the 5/16-18 bolt. I added a large washer to the back to get a good fit and the play allowed me to adjust the two lights where I wanted them. When I tightened them down I could not move them by hand.

There are two holes in the inner fender where the original mount was. I fed the wires out through these and up to where the connectors are located.

After putting the outer fender back on and the sissy bar mount with the passenger seat, I was able to wire the connector plugs through the tail light hole in the outer fender. I had to cut a little over a foot of wire off and strip the wires before I could crimp the pins on. This isn't hard to do, but does take some care not to crush them. If you do crush then, they will not fit into the plastic connectors. Check to make sure the wire colors align before pushing the pins into the connectors all the way.

Over all, I am very happy with the way my bike looks now from the rear. the plastic license plate and turn signals are gone and now I have a chrome custom look. And I like being able to see a little more tire. I was thinking about mounting lights to the shock mounts but that doesn't look as good with this size light (in my opinion) and I'm sure I read somewhere that in NY they need to be a certain size to be "legal". Also I wanted them to be back far enough that drivers would have an easy time seeing them.