LED upgrade for all bulbs

[Strat Tuner]

As promised, I'm starting a new thread for upgrading the bulbs in a 2008 R1200RT. I expect it's been covered before, but here we go again...

The canbus compatible bulbs arrive tomorrow. I'm looking forward to replacing all four turn indicators. The rear will be easy.

The front still have me confused. The owner's manual says something about putting your palm on the mirror and pushing hard to remove it! Really?
This sounds more like a way ot break it. Push the mirror into the fairing to get it out?

Some seem to be able to push a screw driver in at the upper right corner and remove the screw that holds the entire mirror mount. I've seen a couple of videos that get to the turn indicator bulb that way, but I don't see that screw when I look in the upper right corner behind the mirror.

So the first "newbie" question is... How do I get to the front turn indicator bulbs to replace them? There must be a way or no one would ever replace them. That seems unlikely.

[simbo]

There's a small hole underneath the mirror housing with a torxs grub screw in it that holds the mirror glass in place, undo that screw and the mirror pops off quite easily (use a glass sucker from a sat nav/phone mount or similar) from there you can gain easy access to the running light bulb. There will be videos on the tube.

[David.]

For a 2008 Hexhead, fast forward to 1:30 on this video to remove the mirrors.

RT Mirror.jpg (177.72 KiB) Viewed 1682 times

This video might make things clearer.

[Strat Tuner]

I'm glad for the video, Gentlemen, Thank you.

It's not just the mirror that comes off but part of the plastic cowling as well. I was ready to put a screw driver under to corners of ONLY the glass mirror and pull really hard!
That would not have gone well, but Hey, at least I'd get to know the local BMW dealer a lot better than I do now!

I'll pull on the plastic and not the mirror and see if I can get it off together.

Hey , how can you go wrong with the instruction "pull hard until something comes off". This is the first BMW design I have not liked.

[Strat Tuner]

There's a small hole underneath the mirror housing with a torxs grub screw in it that holds the mirror glass in place, undo that screw and the mirror pops off quite easily (use a glass sucker from a sat nav/phone mount or similar) from there you can gain easy access to the running light bulb. There will be videos on the tube.

I've seen the video for this but the screw is in the upper right hand corner. I don't have a screw like that I can find anywhere.

Darn, your instruction isn't the same as the other videos people gave.

So , there must be more than one way this comes apart? In your procedure does the mirror come out all by itself? or does the black pastic frame around the mirror come with it?? I'll go hunting for the screw that causes the mirror to pop put.

Question: if the mirror pops off, why will i need a suction cup from a SAT NAV mount?

I can tell.. I am so going to break this and then spend $800 getting the whole thing replaced at the BMW dealer! Yikes!

What is a "torx grub screw"? There's another thing I have to go and google. Is it like a phillips head screw?

[Strat Tuner]

For a 2008 Hexhead, fast forward to 1:30 on this video to remove the mirrors.

Wow! He makes it look so easy. I still can't see what he did to make the mirror and the black plastic frame around it come off.

Is there a screw that needs to come out first? If so, where is this screw?

[Strat Tuner]

Success!

OK.There is NO screw, torx or phillips, that needs to come out.

I grabbed the plastic around the mirror (not just the glass mirror by itself) , and the plastic came out with the the mirror as ONE UNIT.
It's held in place by two round, plastic, "ball" pieces that fit into rubber mounts. You put it back by placing the two plastic round things on to the rubber mounts and pushing. I can see why one of the videos teaches how to put them on a tether. They could fall out and go bouncing down the highway. Still, the bike I'm learning on is 16 years old, and that's never happened. Two rubber gromets hold it in place.

It's a "ZEN" thing... I would say. You can't really learn how to do it without doing it once.

The videos helped most of all for that reason.

[Strat Tuner]

generic white stop LEDs and generic turn LEDs came today, but this set doesn't know "CanBus". They get returned first.

Tomorrow the "CanBus"-aware bulbs come, and I have high hopes they will work first time, every time... more later...

[Doctor T]

I've tried loads of led bulbs for stop/indicators 99% showed a warning on the dash. My sidelights are led. These only show a warning now and then. Would have thought it should show a warning all the time. Gave up in the end.

[Strat Tuner]

I've tried loads of led bulbs for stop/indicators 99% showed a warning on the dash. My sidelights are led. These only show a warning now and then. Would have thought it should show a warning all the time. Gave up in the end.

Yes. I concede that point. You have to when something IS NOT working and move on.

If the canbus-aware LEDs don't work, I'll add the resistor to it. It that doesn't work, then we're done with the whole project.

I'm not sure Canbus is an improvement over fuses.
It seems very hard to work with all so that it can give me an LED warning. Really? I can check my own lights at the start of each ride, thank you, but maybe there are other canbus advantages I don't know about.

Ultimately, you could re-flash the canbus firmware with new values, but wow! that's going to an extreme.

I've considered wiring a separate circuit off the battery (it's nice to have the battery that close, but the way) for the LED flashing brake lights that was activated by a relay. The relay would sense current in the brakes light and turn the LED flash circuit ON.
The problem there is that the brakes light is not ON/OFF it's LOW/HIGH voltage. The relay would have to be more sophisticated that I can afford.

Here's hoping for a good result.

[David.]

I have read on other BMW R model forums that some owners have been successful in finding all bulbs required of the Canbus "error free" variety.

If you have been successful too, how about posting a link(s) to the bulb type & supplier.

[Strat Tuner]

All the bulbs: 3 headlight bulbs, two brake lights, 4 turn indicators all worked with no Canbus error.

I'll get on Amazon right now and grab photos of what I ordered.

First the Headlights. The bulbs that were there were adequate, but seemed dim. These should do a little better.

71dtLdahvDL._AC_SX679_PIbundle-2,TopRight,0,0_SH20_.jpg (77.24 KiB) Viewed 1145 times

The turn indicators:

71OQFCURqOL._AC_SX679_.jpg (63.29 KiB) Viewed 1145 times

The brake lights have to be white, so I used these:

81rQr01IBBL._AC_SX679_.jpg (82.67 KiB) Viewed 1145 times

[Strat Tuner]

Not sure why there's a double image on the last bit there...

Caution: Most of what I do comes from the FAFO school of engineering

The turn indicators are almost too BRIGHT, I confess, but I'm OK with that.

The headlights all worked, and I think that will be the best part of this effort.

The brake lights worked, but since there are two whitel LEDs, they are too bright and make the brake light look pink! (They have to be white to double as lights for the license plate.)

I removed some of the LED chips from each light to tone them down (pryed them off with a flathead screwdriver), and the bulb still lit up, but the CanBus god didn't like them modified like that.

I put the incandescent bulbs back and fashioned a license plate frame that holds a brake light LED strip AND two white LED strips to light up the license plate independent of the brake light. I blocked the brake light on the inside of the lens with black duct tape.

Finding a wire that is "on only when the key is on" for the plate light was not fun. I used the wire that supplies the rear power port. That worked, but the plate light takes a full minute to go OFF when you turn the key OFF, AND you have to make sure nothing is plugged in to either port (front or back) or they seem happy to just stay on forever! (EDIT: Nope, they don't stay ON forever, they go OFF eventually.)

I ordered the same two white lights that were too bright in RED this time. I'm still thinking they will be too much! We'll see.

I suppose the take-away here is that all the lights I ordered that said "Canbus error free" in the description worked just fine.

I am the proud owner of a 2008 R1200RT, so I can't speak for ANY other model.

If I have to stay with two incandescents for the brake light, that will be OK since the added brake LED strip augments the weak, stock, brake light.

Yes, I will add a photo of all this (maybe even video), when I get to it tomorrow. I fabricate most things from Rubbermaid-brand black waste baskets. I use those because the plastic is durable and easy to form into different shapes. NO, it won't win a beauty award, but that's not as important as folks seeing my brake light and police seeing my license plate.

I couldn't make the brake light flasher chip work. Not sure why.

[Strat Tuner]

OK, here's a photo of the license plate adapter that hosts the brake light LED strip and the License plate LEDs.

The first shows it from looking down on to it.

LP light looking down.jpg (270.26 KiB) Viewed 1095 times

The seconds is meant to show the leds that light the plate.

LP light looking up.jpg (200.24 KiB) Viewed 1095 times

[Strat Tuner]

The replacement LED RED lights came, and they look PERFECT.

on LOW (no brake), they don't overwhelm anything, and the shine just like I hoped on HIGH (brake on).

Sadly, the CanBux god DID NOT like these!!!

... but at least I know that Red lights that ARE CanBus ready (like the white ones I found) will do the job.