Jeremiah is a nut about products on his motorcycle. He’s very analytical. He decided he needed front turn signals, so he checked the Dyna page for model year 2009, 49mm front end products and discovered a set of black-anodized Joker Machine, LED, billet machined, one-piece turn signals.
He was impressed with the angle of the lights designed to match the rake of his glide fork tubes. He was also impressed with the price. The product was unused, in the original package, yet he got ‘em for used part prices. These slick units are good for ’06 to the last Dynas manufactured by the factory.
He had one obstacle to his installation, he didn’t have the original wire leads from the stock loom to the turn-signals. He couldn’t find the leads online, so off to California Harley for some help. They don’t sell the leads constructed. He had to buy the male plugs and the pins. Then he faced buying the wires and insulating tubing and making his own.
Fortunately, he knew one of the techs in service. He took the connectors to him and he made up the leads with the wires in the stock positions, so when the plugs snapped into place, the black wire was connected to the black wire in the loom and the purple wire was happily connected to the purple wire in the loom.
Hang on, we’ll get back to the wiring once the Joker turn-signals are installed. First Jeremiah, James and the lovely Honor helped him jack the bike up with a hydraulic jack. Keep in mind the treachery of trying to jack up Dynas. They can be quirky and dangerous.
Take your time with the jack and maybe use a chunk of 2-by-4 to get around the frame bracket in the back under the transmission designed to protect the oil bag and watch out for the kickstand in the front. Make sure the bike is comfortable and supported. It’s not a bad idea to have a brother nearby to act as jack security.
First, he removed the front wheel, the front brake caliper and the front fender. This is the precarious time slot. He loosened the Torx pinch bolts for one tube, slide it out of the trees, installed the Joker turn-signal and replaced it.
Note: When it comes to removing fork legs from triple trees, it’s not a bad notion to clean the legs and the trees first and spray them down with WD-40 or a light lubricant. This is especially important if your tubes are chromed, anodized or color coated. You don’t want to scratch the bastards.
Joker turn-signals come with Right and Left indicators machined in the bottom, so he knew which one to slip on which tube. Jeremiah had a plan for getting the tubes back into place perfectly. He uses a nickel to indicate the space the tube will extend past the top triple tree. He snugged up the tree pinch Torx bolts and moved onto the next fork leg.
He did the same with the other fork leg and installed the new Joker Machine turn-signal and snugged down the pinch bolts using his nickel formula. Now he installed the front wheel for a safety precaution. If, during assembly the jack slipped or collapsed, the wheel would be in place to catch the bike.
At this point Jeremiah, who is a nut about torque specs, referred to the manual and tightened the tree Torx pinch bolts.
Jeremiah used the seam in the lower tree to align with his turn-signal seam for perfect positioning before tightening his Joker
Allen pinch bolt.
At this point he messed with the wiring. If he had the stock leads he would have just shortened the lead to the desired length and connected the black to the black and the red to purple from the Joker unit. The other wire wasn’t used.
The first thing he did was to connect and test the wire leads to make sure the system was connected to the correct turn-signal. He cut his leads, taking into consideration the swing of the front end. He cut shrink tubing and slipped it over each wire and soldered the connections. Then he slipped the shrink tubing over the connections and used a heat gun to shrink the tubing over the connection.
Then he installed the front brake caliper and tightened it to specs, and finally he installed his front fender. Bada Bing, on the road again, except it started to rain…
