Wired for....everything.

[ribbert]

Over the years my bike has acquired many electrical add-ons and modifications. The trap when doing them one at a time is it's easy to just piggy back here, double up there and splice somewhere else, chuck in a few coaxial wires that can't be shortened and this is what you end up with, a dogs dinner.

 

.....and no longer a clue what any of them do.

An intermittent dropping out of one of my accessories brought on the day I have been procrastinating about for years. Sure, just a loose connection and no doubt easily fixed, but the time had come.
The thought of trouble shooting this mess on the road was truly terrifying.

I started by trying to identify each wire before removing it, that lasted about 5 mins, I then unplugged and cut everything and just ripped the whole lot out as a bundle, pulling wires from god knows where all over the bike. Time to start afresh.

I bought one of these horribly overpriced, but none the less great products, and started from scratch. It has an inbuilt fuse, diodes, and the power can be changed from switched to unswitched by simply moving the fuse left or right.





....and mounted it in the tail.



I made up a bracket and added a volt meter, double USB outlet and now my driving lights are through the high beam and switched.



All the wiring was then wrapped in various self closing high temp sheaths. High quality connectors were used where necessary and not a bullet or spade connector from one end to the other, all soldered and heat shrunk joins, everything is labelled and up front has full battery voltage to everything to the decimal point.
I have also photographed a downstream wiring legend to my phone, should I ever need to trouble shoot a problem on the road.

 

I tidied everything up, put it back together, connected the battery and to my dismay, had a dead short. My first thought, somewhat obviously, was all the wiring I had just re done. However I tracked it down to this. As you can see, it has been getting wet for a long time and chose now, coincidentally, to fail. The arrowed grommet is meant to be sealed all the way around (the bit of white you can see)



Trip delayed by one day to get new parts, finished at 1.30 am with bike still not started since rewire, too late now. Got up a 5.30am, wired, and headed off for 2000km weekend. I was very pleased when the bike started without smoke or sparks or that sickening smell of burning plastic followed by the engine stopping and a plume of smoke rising from somewhere under the tank.
I rode through an incredible amount of heavy rain so I guess the wiring job has passed the water test.

I realise my dashboard view will not be the liking of many (most?) but given it's all about the riding it is a case of function over form and this allows me to monitor and control the functions of the bike and the accessories that make it comfortable when heading off to remote country or long rides with confidence.



It was a great trip around spectacular coastline but the weather was lousy and I have posted the same route here previously, when conditions were more photogenic.

I did take this shot at the National Motor Museum, this guy knows about touring!



Note the hinged "door" flap for rider to enter through.



Noel

This one's for the Aussies (also at the museum)

[jscgdunn]

"I realise my dashboard view will not be the liking of many...."


Noel,
Kind of reminded me of the dash of a X-wng fighter.  May the fjorce be with you.

[Firehawk068]

Nice job Noel!
One of the projects that is on my radar to accomplish down the road.

[ribbert]

"I realise my dashboard view will not be the liking of many...."


Noel,
.... May the fjorce be with you.

Haha, very funny.
Thanks Jeff, but I'll settle for 12 volts.

Noel

[jscgdunn]

Noel they now have helmets for your new theme:

http://www.hjchelmets.com/hjcus/rpha-11-pro/rpha-11-pro-boba-fett/#.V_ZfLU32aUk

[fudge12]

Nice!  If I may offer a cheap, OEM looking solution for future use; instead of the very nice but expensive fuse blocks, go on ebay and pick up a fuse block from another motorcycle.  I've mostly standardized on the old CBR600 blocks.  They have 7 circuits total, two of which are powered by one input wire and 5 which are powered by another.  This gives me (in my installs) two constant hot outputs, one of which is a powerlet on the side of the bike and one sae connector in the trunk.  The switched are GPS, headlight (for some bikes) horn (some bikes) heated grips, powerlet in the dash, plus whatever else seems like a good idea.  I usually like to leave a spare for future use.  They're cheap and look OEM because they are OEM, just on another bike.