Oldfart
FRF Addict
- Joined
- Oct 21, 2017
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I wanted to send a big thank you to @Baja Designs 
for taking care of me with the free upgrade to the new design of the SAE Squadrons. Seemed simple, just pull them off and send them back for a free upgrade. Until I went to take them off after 4 years and found that galvanic corrosion had pretty much fused 3 of the 4 side mounting bolts to the housing. 1 screwed right out, the other 3 were pretty much fused. I ended up pulling the whole mounting bracket off so I could work on getting the bolts out. Drilled a head off, thought that would release pressure and let me remove it. Usually works. Nope. Drilled the mounting bolt so I could use an EZ Out, nope, it snapped off the EZ out.
My buddy, that's a very talented gunsmith, helped me and we completely milled out the bolts. It wasn't a lot of fun, broke a few cutter heads and put a few nicks in the housings, but the threads were undamaged, except for being a weird dark gray color, instead of the normal silver aluminum. Very strange, neither of us has ever run into something that had a fastener seized so hard. Even after 90% of the bolt was milled out, we tried turning it out with a reverse screw stud extractor and it wouldn't budge. Once almost the whole bolt was milled out we could run a tap through to get the rest out.
I figured I would repaint them when they came back from BD with the upgraded internals.
BD ended up replacing most of the light, including the housings, at no charge, when they did the upgrade. I thought that was pretty awesome of them and very much appreciated. The new lights are a noticeable improvement with a laser sharp cut off along the top and a very wide bright spot, very nice. I think they also look a little better now, they lost the little squares on the lens. Now it looks like a normal light lens. I've been using their stuff since I put one of their lighting kits on one of my race bikes back in 2000. They've always been top notch to deal with. Most companies would not do a free upgrade, let alone do this for me. Thanks Baja Design.
for taking care of me with the free upgrade to the new design of the SAE Squadrons. Seemed simple, just pull them off and send them back for a free upgrade. Until I went to take them off after 4 years and found that galvanic corrosion had pretty much fused 3 of the 4 side mounting bolts to the housing. 1 screwed right out, the other 3 were pretty much fused. I ended up pulling the whole mounting bracket off so I could work on getting the bolts out. Drilled a head off, thought that would release pressure and let me remove it. Usually works. Nope. Drilled the mounting bolt so I could use an EZ Out, nope, it snapped off the EZ out.My buddy, that's a very talented gunsmith, helped me and we completely milled out the bolts. It wasn't a lot of fun, broke a few cutter heads and put a few nicks in the housings, but the threads were undamaged, except for being a weird dark gray color, instead of the normal silver aluminum. Very strange, neither of us has ever run into something that had a fastener seized so hard. Even after 90% of the bolt was milled out, we tried turning it out with a reverse screw stud extractor and it wouldn't budge. Once almost the whole bolt was milled out we could run a tap through to get the rest out.
I figured I would repaint them when they came back from BD with the upgraded internals.BD ended up replacing most of the light, including the housings, at no charge, when they did the upgrade. I thought that was pretty awesome of them and very much appreciated. The new lights are a noticeable improvement with a laser sharp cut off along the top and a very wide bright spot, very nice. I think they also look a little better now, they lost the little squares on the lens. Now it looks like a normal light lens. I've been using their stuff since I put one of their lighting kits on one of my race bikes back in 2000. They've always been top notch to deal with. Most companies would not do a free upgrade, let alone do this for me. Thanks Baja Design.
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