Loud pipes make for extra road presence too. My Termignonis seemed a tad too quiet for my taste, so I looked at how to make them louder. One recommended way is to dismantle the box and wrap the perforated straight through pipes. The idea is that you wrap the pipes, starting from the front and the further back you continue with the wrap, the louder it gets. It occurred to me that it might be possible to get a similar result less invasively by using something that would have the effect of blocking the perforations from the inside of the pipes. Obviously, it would need to be something that wouldn't burn or melt away or even burst into flames. What I settled on was silicone sealant, which is pretty heat resistant and can be spread into the perforations and then left to set. I used a flexible piece of plastic plumbing pipe to apply it from the rear of the pipes. This was rather messy, I have to say but I did manage to get a fair bit of material to block the perforations, without leaving too much inside the pipes themselves to impair flow. Subjectively, the pipes now make a lovely, growly, aggressive sound and the engine feels usefully peppier but I readily admit this could well be my imagination! Hardly a definitive method, I know but food for thought perhaps...
Unfortunately, none of this will work on the standard Ducati box, which isn't straight through and isn't held together with rivets either. The Termi is definitely straight through. I checked by sticking my flexible tube all the way through to the header pipes...
That will give you problems. No side light is ok, but, a forward facing fixed red light is illegal and will get noticed by plod.
Light Emitting Diode - pure bright white Brighter, whiter bulbs for the headlights are on my to do list as well, as is carrying out the mod to the dip switch which allows both beams to be on when main beam is selected. I already have a multi LED stop/tail bulb fitted, lovely and bright it is too...
You’re not the only one I seen Red as well, I have dyslexia I've changed my small bulb to a LED (white) looks good, but I now need to change my dip & main to HID as they look yellow compared to the parking light. Guvs.
Similar here thinking of the 4.5k or 5k bulbs (cant justify HID costs), and to do the dip switch mod i bet it took you longer to type your reply than to do the mod (did mine the other week). It took me longer to get a screwdriver out of my toolbox than to do the actual mod with splicer clips. The LED tail light bulb is it the £5 ones from ebay? any problems with it or is it just change the bulb.... been thinking of doing that and maybe the turn signals to amber LED's.
I think the stop/tail LED cluster came from Halfrauds. No problems at all, just twist the old one out and the new one in - good to go. Have to say I'm impressed with Guvs' parking/running light cluster, I wouldn't have thought that a 5 LED cluster would fit in there but it clearly does. I'm not sure of the benefit of LED indicators, apart from being small and neat. The current drain is significant but brief, so no great advantage there and you have the problem of needing resistors to keep the flash rate within limits. Also, they don't tend to be plug and play for our bikes, so any plans to do this are well down my list. I do plan to change the headlight bulbs but like you, not for HID. I hit a badger with a car once and really wouldn't like to encounter one with a bike, so night riding in these parts makes me paranoid and I try to avoid it. I'll stick with brighter, whiter, higher output conventional bulbs by Osram or Philips, as they are apparently the most accurately made, so give the best beam.
Tell me more about your stop/tail led bulb as my standard one is as bright as these damn energy bulbs in my house.
I've checked out the LED cluster I've replaced my stop/tail light with and it's one inch or so across with 19 red LEDs packed into that space. It is branded Prism and came from Halfords, it is the type with a staggered bayonet fixing, so it can only go in one way to avoid getting stop and tail the wrong way round. It is burn a hole in your retina bright but because all the LEDs face through the lens, you don't get any reflection back from the reflective surfaces inside the body of the light unit. Therefore the surface area is only that one inch across in total. I think you can get clusters that have extra LEDs that face the reflective surface, so give a much larger surface area as a result. I have seen references to an LED unit that fits inside the light unit and replaces the reflective surfaces with a plate with lots of LEDs, giving a much better result. However, I didn't manage to track a plug and play replacement down that didn't include indicators. If I do find one at a reasonable price, I will go for it but meanwhile, the cluster I have was cheap and cheerful and does the job of giving a really bright light with minimal drain. Btw, the theory is apparently that if you have a red lens, it is best to use red LEDs, because the red lens then doesn't filter any light out. if you use White LEDs, the red lens will only let the red light produced pass through, filtering the rest of the light spectrum out, so you lose a fair bit of light as a result! How that compares to red LEDs through a clear lens, I have no idea - much the same perhaps??
www.ducatidesigns.com/inc/sdetail/2496 $119.00 This is what I found. It seems well made and an excellent replacement. However, it has been sourced from Germany and is on sale in the States, so re-importing it back to Europe seems crazy. I tried to find it on sale on this side of the pond but failed. Maybe someone else might be more successful...
