This weekend I spent a lot of time adding some goodies to Old #12. One of them was a headlight modulator from BikerBuddy. The product installed exactly like
they said it would and I had no problems with the modulators installation. But where my patience went to hell was when I tried to re-mount the headlamp into
the headlamp bucket. Oh I got the ring back on alright, but what I couldn't do was align the two screw holes that hold the headlamp rim to the bucket. The
ring snaps in place and once it is on it does not rotate clockwise or counter-clockwise to align the holes, which I could not see anyway because I did all of
this with the windshield still mounted to the bike. I did try using the short end of a allen wrench to align the holes but I never seem to get it exactly
right.
I kept taking the ring off and on trying to move it around to where the holes would align themselves. Try as I might I just couldn't find the right alignment. Then it dawned on me that I needed some reference to guide me as to where I was aligning the ring from one attempt to the next. So I got some masking tape and placed it on the top of the headlamp bucket so that it was on both the ring and the bucket. Then I drew a straight line across it and cut the tape on the seam between the headlight ring and the bucket. Then I kept moving the ring from my reference point until finally the screws could be threaded into the holes. As long as I knew what my starting point was I could move from that direction to find the alignment of the screw holes.
Then looking at what I had done it occured to me that I should have put the tape on first before ever removing the headlamp from the bucket. Then I would have gotten the headlamp back into the exact same position if came off from.
So a valuable lesson was learned. Now many of you probably know all of this already, but for those of you who absent-mindedly go into this type of endeavor without really thinking it out ahead of time.....perhaps you'll remember all of this and save yourself a ton of grief.
I kept taking the ring off and on trying to move it around to where the holes would align themselves. Try as I might I just couldn't find the right alignment. Then it dawned on me that I needed some reference to guide me as to where I was aligning the ring from one attempt to the next. So I got some masking tape and placed it on the top of the headlamp bucket so that it was on both the ring and the bucket. Then I drew a straight line across it and cut the tape on the seam between the headlight ring and the bucket. Then I kept moving the ring from my reference point until finally the screws could be threaded into the holes. As long as I knew what my starting point was I could move from that direction to find the alignment of the screw holes.
Then looking at what I had done it occured to me that I should have put the tape on first before ever removing the headlamp from the bucket. Then I would have gotten the headlamp back into the exact same position if came off from.
So a valuable lesson was learned. Now many of you probably know all of this already, but for those of you who absent-mindedly go into this type of endeavor without really thinking it out ahead of time.....perhaps you'll remember all of this and save yourself a ton of grief.
