Projector is Back

It's been a couple years since I explored the projector retrofit. I wanted to see what's new on the market and look what I found! 

Built-in projectors! Wow! I was cool until I found out the pricetag on this puppy. Guess! Hahaha, $1,900. Yup, that's right. Nuts huh? So I guess that's not an option. I still need to eventually sell this scoot with the cool conversion and I'll never get my money back with a mod priced like that. Crazy. Can't see how manufacturers would actually expect to sell any of those. 

I found it on a forum that mods the Atom Mugen - a $190,000 roadster. Even those owners don't buy headlights like this. Crazy. 

I hate to give away my cool plans before it comes into fruition, but it's nice to dream a little. It'll be interesting to see if any of this even works out. Wondering already if the end product will look anything like what I have in mind. If the HID's don't work, I probably won't go much further in the headlight mod and it'll just end there. Not sure. It might be worth trying out this halo with regular halogens. It might look a bit funny though. Never seen a halo w/o a projector. The light reflecting from a halogen would flood the halo, right?

What's making me shy away from this even though it looks pretty cool is the double halo effect. If I end up upgrading it to a projector, I'd want one with a halo. A projector alone just looks funny. But at the same time, a halo projector with a larger halo around it would be so redundant. Not really a fan of that. I guess I could always leave the large halo ring off. But in that case, I may as well save some money but getting a non-halo reflector housing to start with. Ugh. Definitely gotta think more about this.

It's tough b/c I'll have to have the projector in hand before even knowing whether or not it will fit in the halogen reflector. Chances are I'm getting it from ebay, so there's no returns. Don't really want to waste $55-65 if it ends up not work - expensive lesson. 

I'm afraid if this project works out, I may not want to ever sell the scoot! It'll be the first published Vino 125 with a halo projector headlight! Now one of you reading this is going to beat me to it, huh?

HID's Here I Come!

I took the plunge. After hours of research over the past year, I finally decided to go ahead and do it. I'm getting HID headlights. I've read about all the issues people have had with Ruckuses and Vino's and I think I've figured it out. As long as I have a relay to the battery, I think I'm good. 

WHERE TO BUY: 

The price of HID's have dropped a ridiculous amount in the past years. I had purchased a used hi/low kit for my Toyota Rav4 and that cost me $250. Nowadays they're way cheaper and some can be had for as low as $25 shipped on ebay if I remember my research correctly. Since there's a high chance that the kit won't work on the scoot due to the power consumption at startup in lighting up the ballast, I wanted to get something that's at least been tried and talked about on the forums. Price of course was also an issue. I finally decided on DDM Tuning.

WHICH KIT?

Of my choices btw the high/low kit and the just low beam kit, I took the latter. The question was whether I should: 

1. Purchase the hi/low kit with the include harness
2. Purchase the low beam only kit w/o no harness and buy a relay harness separately. 

I called DDM Tuning to clarify if the harness included with the hi/low kit is the same as the one sold separately. They're not. I still wasn't able to clarify if the one that came with the hi/low kit was a relay harness at all or just a regular harness for upgrading wiring. 

I ended up getting the low beam only kit. This provides two advantages:

1. It's more likely to work since I know for sure the harness I bought separately is a relay one. 
2. I can hook this up to my high beam, making my low beam switch act as an off switch for the headlight.

An issue people were having getting the HID's to work on a scoot is that it takes too much power to light up the ballast while starting the vehicle. Since I'm using the hi/low beam switch as a on/off switch, I can start the scoot w/o the headlight automatically turning on (just turn on the engine while the headlight is in the "off'"/low beam"position).

This is all theory until I can install it. DDM Tuning is based in San Diego, so it shouldn't take long for my package to arrive. I'm hoping to have this up and running sometime next week. Then we'll see if any of the three risks occur: 

1. HID doesn't light up at all. 
2. HID lights up but flickers and doesn't stay on. 
3. HID stays on long enough for me to get going but uses up too much battery and my scoot dies. 

 Not sure which I'd prefer, but all three cases would require a different response. Hopefully I'll never have to get there. Wish me luck b/c if this works, I can start the projector headlight conversion! First published one of it's kind on a Vino 125!!!

LED Signal Lights!

I don't know why I nor anyone has thought of this sooner. Perhaps I'm mistaken, but I've never seen this idea done before. What's the idea? 

Hook up amber colored LED light strips to the underside of the scoot (or car) and hook them up to your turn signal wires. The idea is to have a glow of orange on the side of the ride when the turn signal is engaged. It makes the scoot more visible from the side and hopeful improves visibility from the rear as well. 

Materials and tools are both pretty simple. 

• LED light strips from ebay (a pair for $9) 
• Quick splice connectors ($2.49 + tax)
• Philips screw driver 
• Ratchet set (to remove rear trunk rack) 

Although you could splice the wires visible from underneath the scoot's side panels, it's easier to work with if you remove the side panels all together. To get access to the top philips screw, you have to remove the rear rack using the ratchet set. 

The LED strips have a gold wire (positive) and silver wire (negative). As long as they're spliced positive to positive (gold to grey/green), you're good to go. Do it the other way around and there's a chance the LED's will get busted and never work again. Make sure the polarity is correct. 

Step 0: Remove the rubber foot plate to get access to the battery and remove the positive terminal. We want to be safe here.

Step 1: Remove the trunk rack (to get access to the screw that holds the plastic panels).

Step 2: Remove the plastic panels (there are three philips screws holding it in place)

Step 3: Identify the positive and negative wires. 

This is a photo f the right side of the scoot. 

Green wire = Positive

Black wire = Negative. 

Left side of the scoot has different colored wires. Just know the colored one is the positive one. 

Grey wire = Positive

Black wire = Negative.

Step 4: Using the quick splice or whatever method you want, splice the positive LED wire to the positive signal wire. Do the same with the negative. 

Step 5: Reconnect the positive end of the battery terminal, put the key in and test the turn signal.

Step 6: Decide where you want to mount the LED strips. Clean the area well and tape it on using the included 3M tape that's on the back of the LED strips. I was testing different locations and figured under the seat might be a good place. I don't get the glow effect on the ground that I originally wanted, but it looks cool and is very visible from the rear. 

I'm still waiting for the sun to go down so I can get a better idea of how effective it would be in lighting up the ground. Updates to follow after sunset.

Step 7: Put the panels back on. 

Step 8: Show it off at night.

Step 9: Go online and tell me how it went. 

UPDATE: 12:37am
I decided not to mount it under the seat like in the pic above. The white color of the LED's when not turned on is an eyesore. I was hoping to find something in black. No luck. If I'm ever able to find an amber lit black strip, I'll put them back there.

For the time being, I placed the LED's at the bottom of the side fender. It lights up the engine components on both sides. It lights up the ground fairly well, but not as good as the more expensive LED strips. I probably should've gotten those instead of the cheapo $9 ones. Being that the scoot's going up for sale soon, I figure I didn't want to spend too much more money on this.

Another safety mod completed!
 

Good vs Evil

What keeps me going is that every time I get convinced that there's more evil in the world, so far someone nice shows up and reminds me that it ain't all bad. The actions of strangers speak louder than most. 

I'm riding down Lincoln and some fool coming off a cross street decides he wants to block one and a half lanes and just sit there. I obviously slow down enough to be cautious, but not enough so that if he sees me, he thinks I'm giving him way. It's a bit of a gamble, so I keep my fingers on both brake levers. 

I manage to continue in my lane with the right of way. Just before I pass, he throws his hands up as if I did something wrong. Was I really supposed to stop on a main road with him already impeding on his stop sign? Idiot. 

On the flip side yesterday afternoon after I got gas and was entering traffic, I'm waiting for traffic to go through so I can get on the main stretch. A fellow's already stopped at a red light half way down the block as the light turns green, he waves me to go on by.....with a smile I might add! 

In the past 5-7 years, I've noticed a dramatic decrease in drivers whom you let cut in front of you give a thank you wave. This thank-you wave shows you acknowledge that the other person didn't have to let you go, but chose to out of pure courtesy. Don't see that anymore. It's no longer 1:7 cars that do it. It's now 1:50! Huge stretch. Big changes for the worse in the past half decade. So sad. 

On another non scooter related incident: 

I'm sitting a cafe pretty much by myself and notice a guy come in with a pretty cool laptop. It's one of the new Asus brands. The model looks like an attempt to be a Macbook air. I say in a loud enough voice so he can hear me a few feet away, "How do you like your laptop?" 

He hesitates and doesn't look at me at first. I knew I spoke loud enough for him to hear me and the volume was such that it was obvious I wasn't talking to anyone closer to me. As if reluctant, he looks over at me and murmurs, "Fine" and looks away. No smiles. No nothing. Just a jerk attitude and that's it. 

Maybe my standards for people are just too high. Or their performance is just too low. Luckily I met a guy earlier in the cafe that was much more decent of a guy. 

I'll still continue to talk to random people on the offchance that they might be nice people. I refuse to let one guy ruin it for the rest.

Back to scooter talk.

I'm stopped at an intersection, waiting to turn left. It's a four lane road with two lanes coming towards me. Motorists coming my way have right of way and should continue. One guy stops and pretty much encourages me to go. I'm not dumb enough to fall for it knowing that cars coming up behind in the adjacent lane could (and probably would) easily speed by and not stop as the other guy did and totally run me over.

So to the fellow motorists out there, go when you're supposed to go. Don't go when you're not. If you stop when you're not supposed to, it confuses people and bad things can happen. I've seen it before where motorists try to be the good buy and stop for pedestrians who should be waiting for a gap. They encourage the pedestrian to walk and the drivers coming up behind in the lane alongside the stopped driver has no clue there's a pedestrian, doesn't hesitate to wonder why a car is stopped and just speeds pass through. I've seen a couple occasions where a pedestrian almost gets hit. 

Even nice people cause trouble.

I always insist that people go when they have right of way. If they go first, they can't run me over.

Ruckus in My Life

I think I'm missing a Ruckus in my life. If I had a bit more money to dish and was under different circumstances when I got a scoot, I would've considered a lot more strongly in getting this Civic of scoots. The modability is attractive and fits my interest no doubt. 

With something like that it'd take me quite awhile to get it to a point where I'd be completely satisfied with my work of art. Unfortunately now I'm in the selling phase of the scoot and need to let her go. Scoots and kids don't mix - not yet anyway. I probably won't be on two-wheeld gas powered motor vehicles on public roads until much much later. Booo. 

This is the one that made me fall in love. If the owner's looking at this, I'd be happy to give you credit for your work and photo. Just let me know and I'll put a blurp in here for ya.

Never thought I'd like yellow since it shouts, "Taxi!" But this one's looking nice! Loving the oversized wheels of these things. Man, I want a white one! I've been secretly thinking of trading my Vino for either a stock Ruckus with cash or a modded one and I'd pay cash. So tempting.

July 4th

What I miss most when I say good-bye to the scooter is being able to go places where you wouldn't normally go. First was the Giants Parade. Next? July 4th! Just thinking about not being able to attend these events w/o the headaches of owning a car gives me the shivers.

The three worst things about driving are all avoided by riding a scoot: 

1. Traffic 
2. Parking
3. Gas prices

Who wants to volunteer going into traffic? If it wasn't for a scooter, I wouldn't have found this! After looking up on the net where the best places are to view the fireworks, I picked one and rode straight there. On my way though, I found a bunch of traffic heading in a different direction. Not being in too much of a hurry, I followed the crowd only to see them make a circle b/c they couldn't find parking. 

Saw lots of people though. Not sure where they were going. Figured I'd just park and figure it out later. There were enough people that even parking a scooter wasn't so easy! Easy, but just not as easy as usual. I was trying to avoid boxing in a car parked parallel that already had a scooter either in front of it or behind it. Spent about a minute avoiding the handicapped zone. 

Wondering where people were going, I followed. They had disappeared and I didn't see any crowds - until I approached the dropoff and looked down the hill. 

50 people. Wait, no! 100 people. I stood there overlooking the ocean at one of the piers - not even sur where I was. I could see fireworks, but it was small and fairly far away. It was still early and fireworks wasn't really supposed to have started yet. 

Bang. Bang. Bang. 

The first few fly into the air to my right. The crowd follows, just realizing that they too were looking in the wrong area. I guess I wasn't the only newbie. As I follow the fireworks, trying to get closer, i realized there were tons more people than I thought. There were easily 1,000 people there. 

We were so close that babies were crying and we could see the sky filled with smoke at times. The fireworks were right over our heads! These photos were taken after I left the front line and walked back up the hill, hoping to avoid the huge throng of people leaving once the event was over. I stood at the top furthest from everyone else and still got this shot! 

For the majority of the show, the fireworks were almost overhead! I could see fireworks coming out of the boat!!! The spot was so good that I actually could see 3 areas of firworks at one time and was able to hear a fourth one in the distance.

The last time I saw 3 locations simultaneously was when my grandmother was in the hospital and her corner patient room on the top level overlooked the Bay. Ever since then, I wanted to see it again. 15 or so years later, here I was - except much closer. 

Mission accomplished.