Hello,
I'm new here and new to motorcycles in general. I picked up a '73 CB500k in February and have done a number of things to it so far, but for this post I thought I'd share my experience with Joker Machine's gauge rings, and using LED halos to replace the stock lighting.
Cracking into the gauges can be done a couple of different ways, I ended up cutting rather than using the can opener method that other members here have, the joker rings seal them back up anyway so I figured why waste my time. Once you're in this is a good time to repaint, re seal, re anything that might need to be done. In my case I stripped the old paint and gave the outer housing a quick polishing. I sliced some clear vinyl tubing down the middle to form a new "seal" between the joker rings and the chrome bottom of the gauge (I can show photos of this if anyone needs).
As far as the lights go, I used 90mm halos from amazon. I saw another post that recommended 80mm rings but I found that those didn't fit over the speedometer assembly. I installed them facing downwards so that the light is more even, as if seemed if I installed them face up the ring of lights would be very apparent. The mounting tape that comes on the halo lights seems like it will hold just fine on the back side of the faces.
These will be wired with a dimmer from superbright LEDS and that will be hidden inside the headlight (I figured while I'm in there I might as well give myself the option). I also will be running them off of the headlight (blue and white wires) low and high beam power source, using a diode to prevent back feeding - so they will only run at night when the headlight is switched on.
Here is the bike as it stands now - I'm in the process of painting the gauge mount bracket before re installing them and will post an update when they are on. If anybody is interested in knowing - I've replaced the original tank with this one from a CB750 from ebay, and the seat is from Texavina. I haven't seen much info on mounting larger tanks to these bikes online so if anyone is interested in how I did it I'd be happy to relay.
Looking forward to some feedback!
