Category: Gelände Sport

You can go a couple of ways with "hella." You could go the way the young people use the word or you could simply accept this as the brand name. I think I'm going to ride the fence on this one and say that the Hella lights on the GS are hella cool and hella bright. And to be clear, these lights aren't just for me to see better but also for me to be seen better. The number of people turning left in front of me has gone down since adding these lights to Otus so the GS needed a set as well. I attempted to install these lights as I did on Otus but there are a few significant differences - I don't have crash bars on the GS and the wiring is quite a bit different. I was, however, able to put together a gadget bar much like the one on Otus, but with one difference.

Here's how this went down. The GS has a bar under the headlight that is threaded on the ends. Amazingly enough the bolts for the Hella light mounts were threaded the same as that bar. Good planning by the BMW Engineers? Good planning by the Hella Engineers? Blind shit-house luck? Hard to say but mounting the lights was a snap. Next was the wiring. I'd done this before on Otus so the installation of the relay and wiring was similarly easy. The instructions provided with the kit are OK but I'm not an electrical engineer so they could have been a bit more explicit. Having installed this kit before on another bike made this a straight-forward process.

The only challenge with this installation was coming up with power behind the ignition. Fortunately there are two fuses inline and the local auto parts store had spare fuses in stock! This part of the installation was different, and honestly I'm still not sure why. I'm sure someone out there will read this and know why right off the bat but again, I'm not an electrical engineer so I'm figuring this out as I go.

The relay in the kit comes with a wiring loom and simple instructions - connect the red lead to the battery and the ground goes to the frame (and there are plenty of places on the frame where the paint is scratched off so the frame ground is solid). Send power to the lights and ground the lights to the frame also (same comment on this frame ground as well). The tricky part here turned out to be the power and ground behind the ignition. I grabbed power from the marker light in the headlight bucket and ran that ground to frame also (just like I did on Otus) but when I turned on the bike the light fuse popped. I then moved the ground to the ground tab on the marker light, replaced the fuse, and there was light. The lesson for me is that, on the GS anyway, grounding the switch to the frame is a no-no.

I now have some spare fuses in my tool kit and really, really bright lights! I've started a mental count of left-turners that don't turn left in front of me. The current count is 3.

Installing a Jesse Top Case isn't difficult, but the complete lack of instructions means you have to think about how you're going to make it happen. There were a couple of challenges for me with this installation. The first issue is the baggage porter (the official term for the luggage rack according to the BMW microfiche) on the GS. It appears the baggage porter is a stock BMW part but it had several cracks. A quick trip to Bob's BMW revealed a price tag I didn't like ($326.28) so I found a local welder to make repairs. Dave's Welding & Restoration repaired the cracks for a fraction of the cost of the new part. YaY! Dave!

The second issue is the plate that was the top case mounting bits already installed on the GS. As far as I can tell these are "vintage" Jesse Luggage bits but neither the compartment nor the plate had any markings to help me be sure. Anyway, I like the lockable compartment - and it was keyed to the side cases - but the plate itself has been cut to fit in spite of the handle bolted to the baggage porter. I sat the top case on the plate and saw that the turned up edges would prevent the top case from mounting flush to the lockable compartment, so the plate would have to go, but it definitely had a role to play in completing the installation.

I drilled holes in my brand new $340 top case. I hate drilling holes in stuff - especially new, expensive stuff. I knew that I needed to install the top case directly on the locking compartment so I had to figure out how to transfer the mounting hole dimensions to the bottom of the top case. Then it hit me - I could use the legacy mounting plate as a template. I grabbed a roll of one of my favorite substances - double-faced foam tape - to help me in this quest. I put a couple of small pieces of tape on the locking compartment to hold the plate in place - curved edges pointed down. I then used several pieces of tape to keep it stuck to the top case when I had it in the position I wanted. Being able to easily remove the plate from the locking compartment was what was going to make or break this approach. The plate remained stuck to the bottom of the top case without a big fight removing it from the locking compartment. A red sharpie and a sharp twist drill is all I needed to drill the holes. A quick eyeball check showed that my plan had worked!

When I originally separated the plate from the locking compartment there was a foam tape sandwiched between. I wandered the aisles of my local hardware store and settled on the Loctite mounting tape for my top case installation. I wasn't sure about the foam tape I found and thought the Loctite product would be more durable. Only time will tell.

After getting everything installed and the workbench cleaned up I cracked a beer and reflected on the installation. I was pretty happy with how things turned out but when I looked at the mounting job I decided that I needed to do a couple of final things to be really satisfied with the project. I decided that I needed to add fender washers and blue Loctite to the bolts. The only challenge was the placement of the bolts at the front of the top case base. I wouldn't be able to use a full-size fender washer so, rather than using a smaller washer I decided to square off one side of the front fender washers using my Dremel tool. While I'm not sure any of this actually matters in a practical sense this did make me feel better about the installation so there's that...

This is not a hard project but I was hesitant to get started because I had a blank of a top case and no instructions from the manufacturer. Once I got over having to improvise the installation it was fine but I had to jump over that issue to get this done. My issues getting this done have to do with the motorcycle being 20+ years old and the existing hardware being a mix of BMW and what appears to be vintage Jesse bits. The saving grace was the plate installed on the locking compartment. That ended up being the template I needed so I could drill holes. I really like the way the kit looks and am happy with where I ended up!