resistors burning up my leds

Pot is short for potentiometer - they are adjustable resistors.

a 10K pot would be adjustable from 0ohm to 10,000 ohm.  You need to be careful when adjusting the pot though, because if you go below that 500 ohm mark you could damage the LED - to be "safe" you can hook the 470 ohm resistor in series with the pot - this will give you a 470 - 10,470 ohm range so you will never have to worry about putting too much current to the LED.

The pot will have three terminals on it - two outside terminals and a middle terminal.  You would only need two terminals, one of the outside terminals and the middle terminal.

So, basically to find the resistance you would hook your 470ohm resistor to battery power (while the bike is on and the battery is charging).  Wire the other side of the reisistor to one of the outside legs on the pot.  Wire the middle leg to the + terminal of the LED (the longer leg).  Wire the shorter leg to ground.  Now, adjust the knob/dial/etc on the pot to the desired brightness (don't look directly at the LED - super bright isn't just a clever name).  Once you have it dialed in you can remove the circuit from the bike and measure the resistance between the outside leg you used and the middle leg.  Add 470 to that value to accomidate for the 470 ohm resistor and that is the value of the resistor you need for that brightness.

If you want to get fancy (which seriously seems like overkill here) you could install a 5vdc regulator and run the LED off of it.  The regulator will keep the voltage at a rock solid 5vdc so the LED won't vary in brightness as the battery voltage goes up and down.  However, for an idiot light, that probably isn't needed at all!

I figured that since you did not know what a pot was, you might need a little help with the installation of said pot.

I drew it backwards, CCW will be full brightness.  CW will be the dimmest possible.

Kevin, is the above statment the same as the diagram? you said to connect the resistor to bat power and  the outside terminal. then the long lead of the led to the middle termininal but that is I think going to power in the diagram and the anode to ground.

In my head red is positive/black is ground. Buddy at the shop told me the center terminal is a ground terminal.

The posted picture will work, too.

The pot has no polarity so there is no power or ground terminals.  As long as all the components are hooked up it should work.  The only thing you need to pay attention to is the polarity of the LED.

In fact, the resistors can be installed on the ground side of the LED and the positive side can be hooked stright to the battery and it will still work.  The resistance just needs to be somewhere between the battery and ground to limit the current flowing in the circuit.