I am changing my Sportster from the thing that it has been for the last few years back into a Sportster again. Although most of this is straightforward, tonight's agenda included changing out the normal-sized Anglo headlight for the miniscule stock Sportster headlight, with much less than half the volume. Not only is the headlight much smaller (5 1/4"?) but in it's stock iteration, it's bucket is more of a plug block than a repository for wiring - the wiring blocks plug in from the outside, leaving only the other half of the plug block and the connecting wiring inside the housing as Harley Davidson intended. Very neat if one has the stock pins and blocks - which I do not This means all the connections and a fair amount of wiring needs to be nested inside a very small headlight bucket. I was racking my brain for a way to accomplish this task, the equivalent of convincing three well-fed and energetic snakes to coil themselves into a teacup - and leave room for a headlight.
Disconnecting/reconnecting the wiring in a headlight bucket is rarely the best part of my day - but tonight I found a use for Gary Ball's Princess Auto-sourced velcro electrician's tape that makes it easier. I epoxied strips of this inside the headlight bucket (I tried both sides, I think the fuzzier side might be better, but both stuck alright) and a couple of loops to seriously attach the ends of the looms as they enter the bucket. The strips allowed wires to be attached with another band or strip of velcro to the housing as the connections were made, keeping things where they were put, but allowing them to be moved easily. Though the Sportster housing is packed to capacity, being able to keep the wires tight against the outside of the headlight bucket at least made putting the headlight in afterwards possible, so I rate the technique a success.
So keep a roll of the velcro electrical tape (found in the auto/trailer/electrical dept at Princess) handy, it's great stuff anyway, and if you find yourself needing to organize wiring inside a motorcycle headlight bucket, attaching some of this tape to the housing makes what can be an irritating job to do neatly much easier, without having to modify the exterior of the headlight bucket.
