Total Motorcycle Community Forums

Hi All. I'm so pleased I found this forum - I'm in South Africa and just bought my first road bike, so am getting used to riding with traffic etc. My only concern - the other evening I ran low on petrol, and because the bike is new to me I hadn't changed to reserve in anticipation yet. Needless to say, there I was on a highway at night and I couldn't change to reserve on the go as my gloves were too big. I had to pull over and stop to take the glove off, but when I was on the side of the highway I realised I didn't have hazard lights, like a car. What would you do? Put on the one flicker (in my case the left side of the road)?? I only had to stop for 2 seconds, but it was still scary with all the cars roaring past. What would I do if my bike had a problem and I had to stop for a while and wait for help? Also, the side of the highway was being worked on so there was not much more than a car's-width to pull over on. Next time I know how much petrol I get before needing to go to reserve or filling up!

I just leave the right blinker on. Prob should leave the left blinker on as I never thought about it.

i have heard of people putting a switch on their bike that when it's on it links the two signals together. so no matter what blinker is on it looks like hazards with this switch on. sounds easy enough.

Dean, good idea, that will work with most bikes however with some Harleys they use push buttons that only light when pushed an don't stay on. (for haz you need a double pole switch or a seperate flasher for haz) It wouldn't work with a mid 80s or newer Honda either as they have self canceling signals (on wrong side) but my 86 Honda already has flashers from factory, my 82 dosen't.

Biggest problem with tieing sigs would be that you would need to wire sigs direct to battery or leave on ignition (no problem if you have a circuit breaking kill switch) when using flashers. (some newer bikes have Acc position on ign. sw. like a car)

Thanks that is however an easy way to have flashers and I will do on my 61 when I install winkers (I need a flasher and no one carries any here, I will need to order, I checked with Autozone, Checker, Carquest and NAPA and nobody stocks flashers anymore)

Check your motorcycle owners manual. You should have hazard lights. It may be that you've just got to figure out which button activates them.

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Lion_Lady wrote:Check your motorcycle owners manual. You should have hazard lights. It may be that you've just got to figure out which button activates them.

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i know my bike doesn't have them - but it's an 83. is there a time frame where they started making this more standard on bikes? i've never heard of bikes having them. but again, i've mainly been concerned with my bike.

Lion_Lady wrote:Check your motorcycle owners manual. You should have hazard lights. It may be that you've just got to figure out which button activates them.

P

my bike is a 96 and doesnt have it. I checked the service manual on mine and there is no such thing as hazard lights on it.

Tamlyn, I am not sure what kind of bike you have but on some bikes if you hold down both blinkers (provided their are two) at the same time it turns on the Hazzard lights...give it a try.

Just add an additional on-off-on switch to the stock blinkers. I have that done as my modification and so you just flip one switch one way, the other switch the other way and viola. Don't forget to reset them both to center when you're done or you'll look silly riding with your blinker on.

Thanks so much for the suggestions and help. I'll give it a try this weekend. FYI it's a Bandit 400 (I'm still working out which year...) so it's not a new model but post 1990.