First off, I need to give credit to where I got this idea.
http://www.i-hacked.com/content/view/209/45/
And secondly, Im not responsible for any mistakes you could make causing damage to your bike or yourself!
Now, he did it of course to his Kawasaki, and I own a 2006 CBR600 F4I. It’s pretty similar, but there is much more work involved on the F4I because there is a lot of disordering required. Here is everything you will need for this project.
- The tools required to take off your front fairing
- A Philips head screwdriver
- soldering pen (I used mine at 15 watts)
- tweezers or needle nose pliers to work with the itty bitty LED's
- 3.5mm x 2.8mm Surface Mount Leds [(I used EA3528PBC-A / EA3528RWC-A ) Be sure to order more than what you need incase you lose one. These things are sooo tiny, I lost one]
- Thin Rosen-Core Solder
- Desoldering Braid
So you need to remove the Gauge from your bike. This is what my stock set-up looked like.
To do this you most likely need to remove the fairing like I had to. That you should already know how to do because its Preschool stuff.
Once that is off, remove the wire harnesses to your gauge and remove the 3 Philips screws attaching the gauge to the frame. Ignore the bolt, its not part of the process.
Now make sure you have a clean working space and all of your tools
Now remove all the screws on the back of the gauge cluster so you can take the housing apart to reveal this!!
Now you will need to remove the needle on the Tachometer. Lift needle over the needle stop pin and let it come to rest just on the other side of the needle. This is where you want to reinstall it when you are ready to put it back in. Use 2 spoons like below to get it off. A fork works really well too.
Now for the time consuming part. In order to reach the LED's you will need to remove your gauge and LCD screen. To do this requires Desoldering. That’s right! You need to remove the solder already on the board. It takes a little patience and a steady hand but as you move along it will get easier. This is the first time I ever did it and I don’t think it was very hard.
Now this is what you have
And here are all of the LED's on the board.
Once again, you need to desolder. I didn’t use the braid for this. I used tweezers and grabbed onto the LED's and pulled gently as I used melted the solder holding the LED's onto each end.
***Please remove one LED at a time and replace it with the new one. You do not want to get confused where they go or which side is negative and which one is positive. THIS IS CRUCIAL!!
*** "LEDs are a diode the current must flow the correct way. You will notice that in one corner, there is a small triangular molded notch, this is the Cathode or negative end." Make sure to don’t cross positive and negative ends please.
Once they are off, put the new LED's on and maybe test it before you put everything back together. If they work, great! If not, you screwed up and it’s not my fault! Reassemble your gauge cluster and your bike and you are all done!! Here are 2 video clips showing my before and after.
Before: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_t2LFP1WTkw
After: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKYJwhAzYw0
Once again, for more information, check out these 2 sites. Both were a big help along the way, and the second site will actually do all of this for you if you don’t mind coughing up $$$$$ and mailing your gauge to them.
http://www.i-hacked.com/content/view/209/45/
http://www.bluegauges.com/motorcycle/f4i.htm
