First of all, you have to ask yourself a couple important questions:
1. Does your state have vehicle inspections that include motorcycles? If they do, no "strip of LEDs" is going to pass as your primary lighting on the rear. Supplemental, yes. Primary, no.
2. In your "2 miles to work", does anyone ever get behind you?
3. Do you have anyone that would miss you in the event that someone ran into you because they couldn't see you?
Yeah, I sort of get the idea of a clean look on the bike, but let's face it, bikes are already hard for the general public to see, why make it harder? Some of us have gone in the other direction by making the bike bigger AND by adding lights.
Now, to answer your question: switching to LEDs is pretty much swapping the bulbs, but then you have some problems. In the stock tail light, you need to have a bulb that radiates light all around, so it will hit the reflector and project back, through the lens. Many LEDs will appear to be much brighter than a stock bulb, but it's only in one or two points, and they don't hit the reflector, so you only see one intense spot of light, not the 25 or so square inches of light in the stock housing.
Turn signals are yet another matter. Yes, there will be the same lack of filling the lens with light, but LEDs don't draw nearly as much current as stock bulbs. The flasher unit is a thermal unit that requires a certain amount of current flowing through it to operate properly. When you turn the switch ON, your signals will likely come ON and stay ON, not flashing. An electronic flasher might help.
Does your bike have auto-cancel signals? That raises another difficulty, as the flasher has no direct replacement on ANY vehicle, ANYWHERE, if you want to retain the auto-cancel feature. If you don't mind giving up the auto-cancel, you can re-wire the socket a bit and install a generic electronic flasher.
While we are at it, let's bring up one more aspect of the project. Other than cleaning up the look, was there any hope of reducing the load on the charging system? If so, you will need to replace the voltage regulator, too. The stock regulator is optimized for the load of the stock lights. Reducing the load will cause the regulator to shunt more power through the stator, causing damage. A newer, series-type regulator like the SH775 will prevent that.
Are the stock lights looking a bit more attractive yet?
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