Küryakyn Spark Plug Covers (unlit)

I decided to add some jazz to my bike and had seen the Sparkplug covers by Küryakyn with openings in it. You can buy them with or without lights. The lights give a warm glow that seem to come from within the engine.

I bought them without lights and then bought the lights (10 pack) separately from www.ledaccentlights.com, hoping to save myself $40-60 dollars, or so.

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The first I did was to start to remove the fuel tank and I started with following the instruction from Brain Davis detaching the speedometer console (the lower three screws on the console). I then packaged the entire console in plastic to avoid any scratches.

I initially attached the console with tape to the highway bar to get it out of the way. Upon second thaught, I should have taped the entire console to the front fender to avoid it hanging looses.

I also placed a piece of wood under the tire to avoid the wheel slamming to one side as I am taking off the fuel tank and denting it.

Ok, so I then proceeded to syphon the tank and thought I had gotten most of it out. However the main fuel line connects to the lowest part of the tank, so it is almost impossible to syphon every drop of fuel. In other words, you are going to spill some fuel. The instructions at VTXOA talk about closing the fuel valve and only spilling a few table spoons... well maybe with a dry tank and mine was not...I had a solid stream of many many table spoons spilling and had to think of something else...

To tackle this problem, I did the following: I placed a bucket under the spout and then placed a sheet of plastic leading into the bucket. I then disconnected the main fuel line and let the fuel tank drain into the bucket. Once done, just cap it off with anything that fits. I ended up using the cap of a whiteboard marker... fit just right.

After removing the fuel tank, it is now time to start the electrical work...

The lights come with a fusebox and an on/off switch. Reading Joe Florida's instructions, he suggests that the fusebox wire be connected directly to the battery. The switch allows you then to turn then on and off. This just didn't sound right: imagine stepping on your bike and then having to turn the lights on for aesthetics only. I wanted the lights to come on when I start the bike, as if they are part of the engine. The best way I found was to use the existing wiring.

Now, all the electrical wiring is pretty well taped up and I didn't want to start cutting any of it. You will notice on the VTX1800 retro, there is a small light that illuminates the license plate. I followed this wire back and found I could hook up my lights (red and black wire) to these wires where they connect (brown and green)... I know the LEDs draw hardly any energy and thus the fuse for that single license plate light would hold the current... and even it it blew, it is a light one could ride without risk.

From here, I routed the wires to the fuse (bottom of the picture)...

and then to the on/off switch, which I placed next to the ignition, in case, I ever want to turn them off.

Then I laid out the running wires along the backbone of the bike with four branches for each of the cylinders. I used some wire connectors for the branch offs that allow additional wires to just be plugged in, in case I decide later that I want more lights elsewhere, then all I have to do is to unwrap the tape and plug into these connectors. No plans, but just in case...

The 4 wires are carefully threaded to to top of the cyclinders.

Now it is time to solder the lights to the wires. I decided to cover everything, to avoid anything falling or dropping making any marks.

I used heat shrinking tubes to cover the areas that I soldered...

and then taped everything up...

Ok, the LED package came with some brackets to ziptie the lights on to. You can't center these brackets on the cover, because the Spark plug cover is concave and not flat, so I tried using one side and see what happened.

I didn't like how, when watching from the side, the light would shine up, through the openings in the sparkplug cover, into your eye. Seeing the hot spot of the light, just wasn't the glowing effect I was looking for, so I tried bending the heads, so the would shine towards the inside.

I just didn't like how it looked to I tried something else: if the lights shine from above towards the bottom, you couldn't see the hotspot. However, the bracket could not stick to the surface of the sparkplug cover, because this area is very uneven, so I used glue to stick the bracket in place.

Finally placing the LED's in place...

The final result...

Final thoughts: Come to think of it, you could have gotten a very similar effect with the original Sparkplug covers. The lights shines through the sides and illuminates the fins of the cylinders. That is a cool effect for $20 or so. The only difference with the Küryakyn Spark Plug Covers is that they have the openings, allowing light to shine through enhancing the effect and that some covers come with built-in lights, probably much better angled that I did.