Rob:
Many thanks again for posting the videos for coolant service on the NT. Today was the day for Traveller to get new coolant. You cheated however on your video! You already had the meter cover off and casually mentioned that it was a bit "tricky" to remove. Hah!! I guess if you had posted the video showing the struggle, cussing and holding your tongue "just right" it would have ran about a half hour longer ;^). Every thing went like clockwork until I got to the meter cover. I found that if you grab the base of the meter cover and work upwards from there it was a bit less of a struggle. The top tabs were the worst! Finally a bit of brute force got 'em broken loose (without damage). You were right when you said you have to pull til you think you're gonna break something and then pull harder. Another problem I ran into was the turn signal/parking lamp bulb. I didn't disconnect the connector but rather pulled the bulb socket out and set it off to the side, presumably out of harms way. Well, harm found the bulb and broke it. I looked at the bulb and it looked like a 1156NA so I went to my store and got some new bulbs figuring that I'd replace 'em both since I had the meter cover off and they were the original bulbs and would likely fail soon enough anyway. To my surprise, they didn't fit. Closer inspection revealed that the polarity/retention tits on the OE bulb do NOT have the pins oriented in a 180 degree manner like an 1156. I went to my friendly Honda dealer and as you might imagine, he didn't have 'em but agreed to order them. When I got back home I was frustrated 'cause I use the bike every day and wanted to get the job done. I checked the base diameter of both the OE bulb and the 1156NA and they were identical. Why Honda didn't use an 1156NA which are as common as crab grass is beyond me. I took one of my 1156NA's over to the bench grinder and carefully ground off one of the retention tits and the bulb now fit like a glove with no looseness whatsoever. I hate doing half-assed repairs like that but desperate times call for desperate action. As a bonus the OE bulb is rated for 21W while the 1156NA's are rated at 26W so the bulbs are now a bit brighter than OE. I ordered the correct bulbs and will install 'em if I have problems with my "engineered" solution. Hope this tidbit of info will help someone as the OE bulb is not commonly available at auto parts stores. While I was at my store I searched for the proper bulb and both Sylvania and Eiko do not offer that particular bulb.
Mike
