Bikers Workshop Series

Headlight Bulb Replacement on a Honda GL1500 Goldwing.

By Steve Saunders.

Headlight bulb removal on a GL1500 Honda Goldwing puzzles many new owners. Honda did a good job of concealing most of the nuts, bolts and fasteners on the GL1500 and at first glance to a new Goldwing owner, getting to the headlight seems almost impossible. This article will show you how to remove your GL1500 headlight and replace the bulbs. All GL1500 Goldwing models are covered and I've explained the differences in the later ones along the way.

Click the thumbnails for a bigger image.

 

The picture below shows the plastic trim under the chrome windshield garnish being removed, on 1988-94 models you don't have to remove the garnish itself to get to the headlight. 1995-2000 models don't have this trim and on those you only need to undo the two screws holding the garnish in place (and a mounting bracket over the headlight), and remove the whole windshield garnish. So to sum it up; For headlight removal, on the older models you just remove the black trim. On later models you remove the whole chrome garnish and bracket on top of the headlight. Also note that on all models you don't need to remove the mirrors, you can just carefully pull the mirror trim and rubber away and hold them out of the way of the screwdriver while you get at the screws.

Below you can see the turn signal being removed. You don't really need to remove it to get the headlight out, but the turn signals out of the way gives you some more space to work and after all it's only an extra two screws to remove.

The later models have a mounting bracket for the garnish on top of the headlight.

When pulling the headlight out, make sure you don't lose the spacers that sit in the fairing holes where the bolts go through. The spacers fall out easily and in fact you can see one of them on top of the headlight that came loose from the fairing when I pulled the headlight. The second picture below gives you a clearer idea of where the spacers go.

On models that have side/running light bulbs in the outer parts of the headlight (inside the plastic lenses each side of the glass lamp) you will find two capless bulbs. It's always a good idea to replace these while the headlight is out.















That's about it. Reassembly is the easy part and next time you will be able to do the job in half the time.

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