Electrical stuff

Nothing much to nasty to say about the electrics except that the loom had been hacked about a bit in the fairing section to fit an alarm. The alarm was removed by a previous owner but with its siren bracket and wiring still in place. I pulled them out and repaired the loom where it had been cut into. 

The loom is a good quality item. It is protected from chaffing at the headstock, due to the steering action, by a woven fabric sleeve. A nice touch, I think.

I reinforced the loom insulation where it was tatty and cleaned it, then laid it out along the top of the chassis to carefully inspect all termination. All was pretty much in order with just a few scags in the loom insulation and accumulated dirt.  The only problem I could find was evidence of overheating in the insulation around a thick white wire at the front of the loom. The white insulation was puckered and the clear plastic insulator around its female terminal partially melted. The wiring diagram shows white as a main, non-switched feed from the fuse box. The insulation had not actually failed however so a problem that was headed off I assume. Nothing else was obviously wrong.

Replacing the loom was made tricky by my decision to refit the rear mudguard before hand. The loom runs up the left-hand side of the main frame tube and then the left-hand side of the rear subframe, in a channel moulded into the rear mudguard. There is not enough clearance in the channel for the electrical block connectors to pass through so I had to drop the mudguard down to get it through.  I used three large cable ties, bought from an autojumble, to loosely hold the loom in place against the main frame tube. They will also keep the clutch and coolant overflow hose in place later on.

Relays are from Germany - Hella - with solid contacts and copper windings.  The flasher relay is pictured below. It clips to a simple metal plate which is riveted to the rear of the rear mudguard, adjacent to the fuse box. 

The fuse box is retained by two captive M6 inserts. The igniter box is held to a metal frame on the rear mudguard by a rubber harness. 

 The only other problem I came across showed itself when I went to do the simple job of attaching the female spade connectors to the hydraulic rear brake switch. One of them did not seem to want to grip the male terminal on the switch body. The females are clipped into hard plastic sleeves. I managed to get the offender out and discovered a crack in it. The meant it would not spring to grip the male. So I cut it off and soldered on a brass terminal from my spares box. It was straight rather than cranked at 90 degrees as was the original, but I was able to refit it to the plastic sleeve.

 

Wiring from ignition pickups, starter motor, alternator, neutral switch and side stand cutout switch all run up alongside the casting for the sprag and alternator drive gears. The oil pressure switch wire comes up the back of the engine cases to share a connector with wire from the neutral switch. These then couple up with block connectors on an extension from the main loom.  

The battery box fits just aft of a small plate that bolts between left and right spars of the rear subframe. This plate holds starter motor relay and remote hydraulic preload adjuster for the rear shock. It is also a convenient, central location to mount for auxiliary electrical connections because it is close to the battery terminals and in one of the most protected places on the machine, both from knocks and the weather. I shall use this to join the two minilooms I made for my oil pressure and oil temperature sensors and gauges. I replaced the bolts here with stainless steel fasteners.

Visible in the centre of the image: plate that mounts starter relay
(aka 'solenoid') and rear shock remote preload adjuster.
The white box to the right is the coolant expansion tank,
with the battery box visible between it and the solenoid plate.

The main instruments (speedometer, tachometer, coolant temperature and warning lights) are all held in a binnacle that mounts to the top yoke. Even when the bolts were tight, there was a lot of slackness and movement. There is a simple black plastic cover that keeps the underside of the instruments clean and dry. With this cover removed, it is possible to see the wiring and also where the plate mounts to (indicated by the point of my screwdriver in the picture below).  These are rubber insulated posts. I found that the posts were 8mm in the main, with M6 tips. I put an M8 washer beneath the standard M6 item to compress the rubbers more.

This worked brilliantly, taking the unnecessary slackness out of the mounts whilst retaining the insulating properties of the rubbers.