Some personalization of my WRx

I finally painted some stripes on the front and rear fender. Lowe's didn't have the Krylon Fusion, but Valspar makes a spray for plastic, so I picked some of that up. Turned out really well, I think. It ties in the white stripe on the headlight shroud really well.




I already scratched the rear fender a bit with a heavy backpack that was resting on it.  

I also picked up some cheap LED strips from eBay, look like this:



They are LED strips encased in a flexible silicon. I paid like $4 for the pair, shipped. I drilled some holes in my handguards the same size as the little nubs on the LEDs and pressed them in. I currently have them wired to the turn signals, but I think I may wire them as running lights instead. The mirrors have turn signals already, which are plenty large and bright.

Looks good. It does tie in the white on the headlight bezel.

Looks good with the white on the blue.

I'm thinking of getting some thin yellow pinstripe tape to finish off the edges of the stripes. For some reason I have always loved a bit of yellow with my blue...

Those LED strips look just like strips I have ordered from Oznium.com.  Can't beat the price, but I have had 8 of 8 strips fail progressively until only two or three of the LEDs are left, flickering dimly.  Two were mounted outside and exposed to elements, but the rest were mounted inside in the footwells of my old car + a friends'.  I think the solders are so teeny tiny delicate that even a little vibration kills them relatively quickly (3 months on the exteriors, around a year on the others).

Good luck with the LEDs - hopefully they are from a different manufacturer than mine. The paint looks great!

rocketjump wrote:

Those LED strips look just like strips I have ordered from Oznium.com.  Can't beat the price, but I have had 8 of 8 strips fail progressively until only two or three of the LEDs are left, flickering dimly.  Two were mounted outside and exposed to elements, but the rest were mounted inside in the footwells of my old car + a friends'.  I think the solders are so teeny tiny delicate that even a little vibration kills them relatively quickly (3 months on the exteriors, around a year on the others).

Good luck with the LEDs - hopefully they are from a different manufacturer than mine.  The paint looks great!

The build quality definitely leaves much to be desired. I already lost the outer two LEDs on the right side...  Not sure if they ever worked to begin with. But for a few bucks, I can always order more when they quit. The wires are super thin, and with the flexibility comes broken stuff inside.

So I already lost the outer two LEDs on the left side. Looks like it is a matter of time before all those LEDs all quit.

On the bright side (haha), I did get some yellow reflective striping tape. I really like the way it looks. It is more yellow in person and less gold.





My next plan is to do something with the number plates, but not sure what I want to do yet. They look like big blank white spaces, and need something to break them up a little.

While I had the seat off to put the tape on, I noticed my airbox was full of little seeds. Seems like a small animal decided to take up residence, which is strange because I still ride the bike several times a week. Not like it sits for any long period of time. I had a heck of a time cleaning out the pleated air filter... I didn't notice any wire damage, but I am going to have to keep an eye on it and maybe put some traps around the bike.