Sidelight Bulbs

I know this has been covered before but is there a guide of how to get to those little bulbs.

Ive tried from the front but there is no way I am going to get my hands in there so I hoping someone has replaced theirs before and is able to remember the steps they took.

I tried a forum search but nothing came up

I find this topic curious. The same goes for the headlight bulbs.

I changed all the front bulbs when I bought my SW and although I found it a bit 'tricky' and lots of patience was involved, I found it 'relatively' easy compared to other replacement items on the SW.

I had a good feel inside the front cover and kind of formed a picture in my head. I also used the parts catalogue to get an idea of the shape of things. (The horror is losing the headlight spring clip into the bowels of the front fairing so stay clear of that). You might need to suffer some pain to manipulate your hands but it's worth it.

That's all I can offer.

I posted about changing those sidelight bulbs for LED bulbs a long time ago, and having to go through the same malarkey again a few weeks later after one of the LED's packed in and I put the filament bulbs back in.

I'm not going to go through it all again because I posted about at the time, but be prepared for the rubber bulb holders to be sticky due to heat and age. Watch in dismay as the bulbs are squeezed out of their holders as you withdraw them and drop down inside the headlight reflector. That necessitates removing the headlight bulb to feed a long flexible grabber down through the hole and after many attempts position and retrieve the bulbs.

The plus side is apart from skin scrapes to the back of your hand, is you quickly become quite adept at poking about in such a small restricted space.

The other pain is the ass is that Honda W shaped garnish that has to come off first to gain access. After reading multiple posts from owners over the years, I'd say that almost everyone that removes it will break one of the flimsy plastic holding tags. Repairing and sticking those tags back on to the screen garnish with various adhesives has also spawned many topics from owners.

If the bulbs haven't blown, I'd leave them alone. Once I put the OE bulbs back they were working and trouble free right up until I sold my Silver Wing in October 2018.

Thanks for the replies so far. I've no qualms about dropping a bulb into the headlight unit as I've a flexible magnetic tool that will fish them out.

I just wanted to confirm you attack the job from the front because at the moment I can't see how even with the plastic grille thing removed.

There's topics on here about removing the screen garnish to gain access. I have vague memories of removing screws, then sliding an old credit card or similar up the bottom of the garnish to release one of the holding tags, after you're sprung that gap open you can gently pull the garnish away… in theory.

Green7 wrote:

Thanks for the replies so far. I've no qualms about dropping a bulb into the headlight unit as I've a flexible magnetic tool that will fish them out.

I'm not so sure about that, you may be able to grab the bulb magnetically and lift it, the problem is getting it out of the reflector without it dropping off, as it's likely to if it touches the edge on the way out.

I tried a magnetic grabber, before changing to a flexible pronged grabber to retrieve my bulbs. That did the trick but it still took a few attempts to get them. When the bulbs do drop off, they’re likely to land and roll anywhere inside the reflector.

I just wanted confirmation that the job is tackled from the front by first removing the plastic garnish and then somehow getting your hands in there .

It can be accessed from the area just behind the dash panel- truthfully, it’s far better (and less torture on your hands) to properly remove the front cover (the fairing)- it takes time, but is straightforward and you’re less likely to break plastics that way. I accessed mine by squeezing my large man hands in there, and it was very difficult- I had taken the front cover off the bike to replace it some time later and found I could have done it that way, so more fasteners to remove, but a better result.

The experience I gained from changing OE sidelights to LED's, all the faffing about with dropped bulbs, then going though all that again with dropped LED bulbs changing back to the OE sidelights meant it was easy when I got round to replacing the headlight bulbs with Osram Night Breakers.

I'd cleaned off all that sticky residue off the rubber components on the bulb holders and lubricated them, so it was straightforward doing both bulbs.

Of course there's none of that on my Forza, everything is sealed LED units, and there's no under seat storage area light to potentially flatten the battery either.

Well I bit the bullet and changed the pilots to LED's. There was no way I could change them without removing the complete fairing, so off it came. Took me about and hour and then 30 minutes to get it back on. Now I could do it with my eyes closed

The trick is knowing exactly in which order to remove the other bits and pieces so that you have access to the fairing and then which bolts, screws and clips to remove.

Happy with the result and if I ever need to replace a pilot light I know exactly how to do it