grounding light

I bought my husband a fender ornament light for his Drifter for a gift. We had it mounted and then because of the fenders being so wide we had to have the cycle shop mount the wire up under the fender when we had new tires put on with the fender off. Anyway they charged us to do that and then did not run the ground wire with it. When I called them they said that they would charge another 35.00 to do it right. I am not going to pay it again they should have realized that the fender was fiberglass and so it was not grounded. The forks are aluminum ;and I need a suggestion or 2 for how to maybe go about grounding this. I bought the light off of e-bay and I probably should not have because it is an Indian head. People now say nice Indian and we never had that intention. It is just that I liked the light and the look.

Bummer

That’s really an unfortunate that some people / shops are like that. First I would go back to where-ever that shop was and ask for who-ever keeps that boat afloat and tell him/her that there a piece of doo-doo if they don’t do the job right. With that said, a ground is a ground is a ground. Unless your fender is rubber mounted you can ground it right to the fender. A lot of little electrical gadgets-ground is what-ever metal it mounts to. If you have a separate wire for a ground, try looping the wire back to the mounding stud/screw/bolt, make sure the wire is not so long as to rub the tire. Good luck.

Oops

THE FENDER IS FIBERGLASS. Sorry about that. Still, your fiberglass fender has metal screws / bolts that mount it to your forks. so, just run / mount the wire to where your fender is secured to your fork, make sure the wire is between two metal washers.

Light doohickey

Hi folks. Well, (IMO) it should be just fine for a ground, and a lot neater. “I” just walked out to my bike again and placed one end of my meter anywhere on my fork, and the other end anywhere on my frame, (anything metal), and had great continuity; zero ohms. Now I could still be wrong of course, because I never mounted one of them light-thingamajig’s on my fender before, so ChuckTx could be correct. Nuff said.

The problem with using the tree as a ground is that it relies on the bearings for contact. Grease is non conductive and as the grease hardens the ground can be lost. A lot of flickering headlights and blown low beams can be traced to a missing frame to tree ground wire that was left off. Been there, done that my very self.

Opinion

Hey there chucktx, I’m not mad or anything like that. I was just stating my shade-tree opinion on the subject. I went out and checked the continuity and thought it would be fine. NOW I know why my head light is acting funny. I wonder if I could tap the bottom of my tree and put a little ground wire to my frame; because there is nothing like a GOOD ground.