Bonneville Missing Switch?

Used to be headlight switch now are always-on

 

If you look at the schematic in the OEM manual you will see it there

I checked on EBay-UK to see if there were any earlier ones with the switch but at least currently, there are none listed

 

The early T300 models of trident, 92 to about 98 had light switches there.

 

Even the T5's should have it, up to about 2001
Speed Triple and Daytona ones are much easier to find - they have the switch on the left light switch however.

 

Here in N America governments decided to make us safer in spite of ourselves and mandated always on headlights. I supposed its a good thing and we have gotten used to it. Instead of redesigning the switch its just a blanked area.

 

Safer ?? I question that !! When a motorcycle is coming out of the rising/setting sun if the headlight is on the bike is invisible ! If the light is OFF it cast's a shadow and becomes VISIBLE !!!!

 

I didnt say it was safer, governments said that. However, always on headlights, cars and bikes, do make them more visible to oncoming traffic. One can always say, well, in this situation.......

 

On the subject of lights always on and with bikes like ours having twin side by side headlights reminds me of a story I read about a bike v car collision. The bike (R1) was on the main road and a car pulled out of a junction into its path giving the rider no chance of avoiding it. The bike wasn't speeding but the car driver admitted he saw the bike but thought it was a car in the distance and had time to pull out without a problem. Turns out the car driver had very poor eyesight and was prosecuted but it's a lesson we should heed.

 

That is why the scheme on the T5 headlights is configured so that one operates directly off the switch and the other via a relay - in some markets there is a minimum spacing requirement between headlights for this very reason. For those markets the relay(s) were simply not installed in the sockets, this making the twin headlights only actually operating one of them (opposite lamps for the high & low beam)
Triumph did it that way to enable the same configuration of harness to be used regardless of market requirements.
(other such examples are CA models which have a Fuel Vapour Emissions requirement and others which required exhaust Secondary Air Injection - again the harness is common, regardless of whether these features are actually installed or not)