A Red Running Light for the Trunk

I had a day off today, comp time for hours worked over 40 last week in San Francisco.

Spent the morning riding to Harbor Freight for a new voltmeter which I turned out not to need and some other sundry items. I cleaned up/tightened the wiring instead to the existing voltmeter and it seems to be working OK again. It had not been displaying the green light I am used to seeing when off idle which worries me since to me that meant the battery was not charging.

We'll see if the work done this morning rids me of the issue. As it is, so long as I see yellow, the battery is reporting at least 12 volts, so that's OK as well.

I had lunch with my loving wife and afterwards we stopped at an auto parts store where I picked up a LED Marker Light and a quick disconnect rig disguised as an alternator extension. Once we got home, I rigged up the quick disconnect to Maria and the LED marker light to where a cheap red reflector had come with the trunk.

The Round Red Reflector is what was replaced

A little bit of wiring later, voila, I have another bright red running light aimed directly to the rear of the motorcycle, high up on the trunk for increased visibility range, hopefully.

I'd toyed with many options that I found online, and may yet go another route. But, for now, this will add to the light behind me, hopefully getting cagers' attention and perhaps bright enough at night to get them to back off a bit when stopping behind me.

How Maria probably looks (with ignition off) from the rear to a car approaching her

The new farkle

How Maria should look to a cager behind me with their headlights on

Maria with just the running lights on

I expect the running lights won't look so bright in broad daylight but at least its something else to hopefully catch the innattentive cager's eye while I am riding around.

Update: 20Mar2008: Due to a close call on 19MAR, have rigged the trunk light to blink in sync with my hyperlites instead of on as a running light. Hoping for more conspicuity.