WTF Blackbird indicators

The other day a dashboard light gave out on the Blackbird. The one that lights up the speedo from 0 to about 200, creating some interesting moments when driving past speedtraps at night.

Needless to say, this needed to be rectified as soon as possible. Instead of just going to the local bike shop and getting me one of those 3 cent incandecent bulbs I decided it's the perfect opportunity to make the change to the 21ste century and install LED lights. So I went to the local parts store called ebay and ordered me some LEDs from China. A week later I found a small package on my doorstep and the repair could start.

Yay Chinese LEDs 

Reading the repair manual, i realized getting access to the instrument cluster meant removing the complete fairing. This is going to be a long one, but hey.
After removing the better part of the fairing i found a wire running from the left to the right indicator with a junction in the middle going to the instrument cluster, so some further investigation was necessary.

Upon opening my rear view mirrors to get  to trace the wire I found this :

Yes, that's a dasboard light glued, well actually siliconed, on the indicator bulb. The connections are soldered and isolated by thin air. I'm actually rather surprised the installer didn't just tie them together with a nice bow in the wire :-/ 

It does however answer the question to why my indicators were always sort of on. 

But there's always a silver lining, it gave me an idea for another project. How does changing the indicators by some LEDs sound. Ok, I agree a bit ordinary, so I'm going to get myself some smoked indicator lenses and some nice 2-tone LEDs. this should give me some white DRLs and orange indicators.

So there you have it, the blackbird is slowly making his entry into Greg's World :-)