I guess I dont race my 14 enough, but I never seem to see the shift light. So I came up with an idea. About a year ago I bought strands of 12V LEDs, and wired them up above the windows in my Home theater room as back lighting. Well, I still had about 3 feet left over. So I had an idea. Put a short strip of them behind the bump on the top of the gauge cluster so you cant see them, and just reflect the light off the windscreen. I just finished this about 10 minutes ago, so I havent ridden with them yet, but honestly I rarely get close to redline, so besides testing them out, it might be awhile before I "need" them.

I took the gauge cluster apart, and started testing the board, and finding spots I could wire up. At first I just wired up the Positive lead to the OEM Shift light LED, and used a ground outside the cluster, and that wouldnt work, you have to use a grounding spot I found inside the cluster itself. After a little more testing, it works great.

Disclaimer: If you mess up your bike, or dont test this first, and mess your bike up, its your own damn fault.
Once you take the cluster apart, there are 4 pins on the LED, K,K,K, and A. I used A as the positive for my new LED strip. And about 1inch to the left, there are 2 solder points marked R60, I used the Left solder point as my ground.
Edit: I should of said, Im using the stock LED as a trigger for a relay, and the relay is hooked to the battery, so my LED strip is getting its amperage off the battery, not the stock LED.

Pic was taken before I slid the heat shrink on, and yes, it looks bad, my small soldering pin was at work, so I had to use my gun with the smallest tip I had.

LED strip across the back of the Gauges

LEDs turned off, you cant see them

Shift light and LEDs on Dim

Shift light and LEDs on Bright

And a quick Video, Shift light and LEDs set to Flash

* Last updated by: Kolk1 on 9/22/2012 @ 6:43 PM *

Very clever. I love home brew.

Kolk1,

I am generally a fan of DIY projects and homegrown solutions. But I would be concerned with the load your LED'S are placing on the original circuit. If the original circuit was designed to handle a single LED I can't imagine that the manufacturer would over build the circuit to handle a strip of LED's. From your photo it looks like you connected to the LED after it's current limiting resistor. Using an Opto-Coupler (IC)would be a better and safer alternative as it places very little demand on the original circuit and optically isolates the original circuit from your new load and the circuit. If you look at the IC below you can see its circuit construction.

You can get Opto-Couplers that have a rated output up to 4 Amps (even if you de-rate it for voltage variance and heat, it could provide 1 Amp. The nice thing with optical isolation is that whatever nightmare you create on the output circuit path it will never destroy or damage the input side.

Hope this offers a few ideas.

Spyglass

Good call. Ill look into it.

I guess I didnt explain part of what I did either. I didnt run the LEDs straight off the stock LED. Im using the stock LED as a trigger to a mini relay, and the relay is getting its power directly from the battery.

Bike is gonna be down for a couple months away. I popped the motor a couple days ago.

* Last updated by: Kolk1 on 9/22/2012 @ 6:41 PM *

If i may ask what mini relay did you go with to complete this task?
I am interested in doing this job myself, i have already been into the stock gauges to swap the led's to a different color before. So i am familiar with the layout of the mother board.

Thanks
Patrick