As it does every Spring, my brain has been answering some primordial call to escape from my skull, swim upstream, and spawn. Although I did manage to herd enough neurons into a formation tight enough to process the Product Reviews for this week’s issue, they immediately rebelled when I attempted to think about a topic for the Editorial. Whenever I tried to contemplate the state of the electronics industry, emerging markets for green technology, or other weighty matters, I found my thoughts drifting to the ride I had planned to take on Felix, my beloved 1986 Honda Helix
motor scooter this weekend. Finally, I gave up and headed to the garage.
Felix serves as both a workhorse and a pet vehicle for me. Fast enough to handle highways but compact enough to park nearly anywhere, it’s my preferred set of wheels for errands on the congested streets of Princeton and West Windsor as long as the snow isn’t too deep. At 60+ mpg, a $6 fill-up is enough for a long afternoon’s adventure on the back roads that still wind through the wilds of Southern New Jersey. With most of the major Spring household chores behind me, I’ve allowed myself some time to prep Felix for the upcoming riding season. Besides the usual tune-up and lube, I’m indulging in a bit of cosmetic mechanics and wiring some LEDs into the scooter’s body panels. I know it’s a goofy thing to do, but the idea of seeing Felix glowing like a UFO from every air scoop and cooling vent just tickles me.
To get started, I purchased a small
LED lighting kit that’s designed especially for scooters from Joe Florida, a web-based vendor that seemed to have high-quality products and pretty good reputation for customer service. The kit is a nice combination of individual LEDs, a few 4-LED pods, and all the basic hardware I need to mount and wire them into the bike. I ordered the kit with blue LEDs and added a few extra LED pods in red to light any rearward-facing orifices. All the LEDs come with their own current-limiting resistors attached so it’s pretty straightforward to wire them into the bike. I found an inexpensive set of extra lower body panels (where most of the vents and intakes are located) and have spent several pleasant evenings mounting the LEDs on them and making neat wire bundles that will eventually plug into connectors I’ve wired into the bike’s power system. This way, any LED-bearing panel can be easily pulled back off the bike for maintenance (or upgrade) without having to cut wires or undo splices.
A simple safety fuse and dash-mounted power switch will power the lighting system for now but I’m planning on eventually adding a home-built controller that will fade, blink and sequence the lights at my command. I want to get the new body panels installed and working before I even begin to think about adding the controller or another dozen-odd accent lights I have planned for the upper body area.
I’ve got another day or two of work ahead of me to finish up the wiring and get the new panels bolted onto Felix: tasks I hope to make happen in the next week or two. If all goes well, I’ll have my rolling light show up in its basic form by early May – just in time for some great rides down to the shore and up to the mountains.
Actually, the LEDs are the first part of a somewhat more elaborate makeover I have planned for Felix. I’ll start planning the next phase in detail once I have this stage wrapped up and my modest recreation budget recovers a bit. I’ll tell you more about what I’ve got in mind as soon as I manage to get the necessary funds and the necessary free time to occupy the same coordinates long enough to make it happen.
In the meanwhile, the mods I’ve already done will ensure that Felix is even more fun to drive as well as easy to spot regardless of whether it’s day or night. If you’re ever out here in New Jersey and see a heavyset guy with a beard and a big smile riding a little red scooter, wave! I’ll be sure to wave back.
Comments? Questions? Care to share your own way of coping with Spring Fever with me or your fellow readers? Write me at
lhg at en-genius dot net or post your comments on our blog!
