A monkey off my back (rewiring project)

[Drunken Monkey]

So a while back I equipped my bike with a set of really nice microswitches to replace the ugly, stock "chicken-head" handlebar controls as well as clean up the visible wiring going to them.

The downside was that while the controls looked great, and the visible wires were very clean, the resulting relays and connections into the stock wiring harness were... a mess at best.



So, I finally decided it was time to clean up this blight and vastly simplify my bike's wiring harness by getting a hold of one of these nifty little boxes from MotoGadget:



Basically, it's an all-in-one fuse and control unit that works with very small currents (like the kind microswitches carry)
And it handles turning on and off various lights and accessories on your bike by supplying them directly with current, rather than running the current through a switch (more info can be found here: http://www.motogadget.de/en/m_unit.html)

So I went out and ordered one of these from Spiegler USA, and also 'appropriated' one of the giant printers at work to make myself a 5 x 3 cheat sheet.


So armed with this, a multimeter, a really good set of wire cutter/strippers and a good soldiering iron, I set off to redo my bike's wiring.

Initially I was scared as hell, but Duck Stew had encouraged me in the past by basically telling me I'd be fine, and to "just start cutting."  However, rather than "just start cutting" I worked with the cheat sheet and made a few annotations. Basically I figured out how to wire up the circuits I needed with the box.

It turns out I'd still need a few fuses in place, as well as one relay. All this because a) the power demands of all the FI systems (fuel pump as well as ECU & ignition) just might be more than the box could handle and b) It turns out the ECU controls some of the power to these circuits. 

Basically, as cool as the box was, it couldn't quite handle everything.


So once everything was planned, I started cutting off all the protective sleeves from the wiring harness, and freeing up all the wires that I could. In cases where the wires were too tangled up to get them separated, I simply went in and cut them.

So it wasn't long before I was looking at this

And this:



And this:




Now normally this would seem like a hard problem to deal with, but luckily I had a bottle of this handy:



In all seriousness, it wasn't that bad once I'd planned out the additional circuit to handle the ignition and wired that up. That was easily 2/3 of the project. Mostly it was a matter of meticulously mapping out the needed circuits, double checking the design and then doing a "first pass" where all the wires are connected (messily) and confirming that that the bike starts and runs correctly.

Once the whole set up passed it's "dry run", with the  bike running, I went through and cleaned up and shortened the various wires, working one at a time, cutting, soldering and taping. That part went relatively quickly (mostly because I wasn't constantly going "is that a red-blue or a red purple wire?")

A second 'run' to confirm it still worked, and a quick set of waterproof wrapping and I was done.

And without too much work I ended up with this:





Well, if "done" means a running bike with no instrumentation or lighting 

Still, lights, brakes and the instrument panel is all stuff I've all wired before and is vastly simpler than what I just did. Still, I won't breathe a sigh of relief until that part's finished.

And while I suppose I could have posted about this while the project was underway, I realized I wasn't going to fess up about this project until I actually got the motor running.

If this had failed spectacularly I would have quietly posted up "Need a new wiring harness" on some dark corner of the internet, far away from this place 

[Duck-Stew]

Nice work so far DM!  Glad you're tackling it (& not me).    keep posting updates...

[pitbull]

just looking at those pictures gave me a panic attack and had me running for the bottle of ativan.

[TAftonomos]

Damn man, nice work    I knew a monkey could do it 


I'm DREADING doing the same thing to mine.....

[Drunken Monkey]

Nice work so far DM!  Glad you're tackling it (& not me).    keep posting updates...

Thanks, I would have let you do it, but you done moved away. Also I am poor these days (damn kids and their "needs"  )

By the way, any tips on fit and finish on a job like this? i.e. Securing wires, wrapping, that sort of thing?

[Ohmic]

Excellent. That is what it's all about. Good job! 
We expect pictures of the bike soon!

[Spidey]

Awesome.  Now that you've got the test mule out of the way, you can do my bike next.   

[Duck-Stew]

Thanks, I would have let you do it, but you done moved away. Also I am poor these days (damn kids and their "needs"  )

By the way, any tips on fit and finish on a job like this? i.e. Securing wires, wrapping, that sort of thing?

Always add 1 to 1 1/2" inch in the loom before you wrap it as that'll get taken up pretty quickly as each individual wire becomes part of the loom (moves around to work w/all the other wires).

I have had great success w/rubberized tape as you expand it before wrapping the loom and then it tries to contract and pulls tight and is water-resistant.

I also recently tried some wire loom from a hot-rod shop I believe it was from Painless Wiring.  Pretty good stuff!  But, in order to get some wires out of the loom (for a connector for instance), you'll need to cut the loom slightly and then put zip ties before and after the connector comes out of the loom to keep the loom from splitting further.

That's about all I can think of right now...

[suzyj]

Thanks, I would have let you do it, but you done moved away. Also I am poor these days (damn kids and their "needs"  )

By the way, any tips on fit and finish on a job like this? i.e. Securing wires, wrapping, that sort of thing?

The plan of attack that we've always used at work (wiring equipment racks, not bikes) is to first come up with a plan for the wiring routing, then measure the lengths needed (using a piece of aluminium or brass rod that you can form to shape with fingers).  Then the plan is transferred to a piece of paper (we design the loom in autocad and then print 1:1, but you can just draw directly on butchers paper).

Then paste it on a piece of chipboard, and put nails in where the wire bends are, plus some nails at the ends of runs to tie off to.  Once the loom is laid out, we generally use looming cord to hold it together.  For a bike though, I'd probably use either spiral wrap or tape.

[DucHead]

Awesome.  Now that you've got the test mule out of the way, you can do my bike next.   

Good idea.  Your bike needs a lot of work.   

[FastAndLight]

I'm just as interested in the switches as the wiring. I've contemplated doing the same to my bike.  Do you have some pic of your switches and a good source for cool switchgear?

[edit] Forgot to mention, that looks outstanding. Great job cleaning it all up!

[Drunken Monkey]

I'm just as interested in the switches as the wiring. I've contemplated doing the same to my bike.  Do you have some pic of your switches and a good source for cool switchgear?

[edit] Forgot to mention, that looks outstanding. Great job cleaning it all up!

The switches are from (now out of business) WMD in Germany.



I'm going to combine them with a set of these on the left side:


Although I am tempted to just go with a paired up set of the bottom ones, since they look so damn good.

[DucHead]

Wow, the switch directly above is gorgeous!     Who manufactures that?

On a scale of 1-10, how difficult was the switch switch?  

And how are you handling all the functions with two switches on the left?

My left side unit has high/low beam, flash-to-pass, horn and turnsignals, while the right assembly has just two: engine cut-off and start buttons.

[Drunken Monkey]

The black & chrome switch is from motogadget. I agree they are very tasty.

As for the WMD switch, it basically has two push-buttons and a little left-right nipple switch for the turn signals. One for horn, one as a high-low bean toggle.

The problem is I want a larger switch for the horn, for easier access, and I need a third switch to control the functions on my tach's menu system.

So if I did switch to the motogadget switches, I'd go with two for 4 buttons total (two for signals and horn and high-low), and wire in a small switch on the back for the tach.

As for how hard it was.... You can't really do the switch without a fair amount of electronics, since it's not compatible with the stock set up at all. And the first set-up I had was probably harder than the rewiring project you see above.

[DucHead]

The black & chrome switch is from motogadget. I agree they are very tasty.

As for the WMD switch, it basically has two push-buttons and a little left-right nipple switch for the turn signals. One for horn, one as a high-low bean toggle.

The problem is I want a larger switch for the horn, for easier access, and I need a third switch to control the functions on my tach's menu system.

So if I did switch to the motogadget switches, I'd go with two for 4 buttons total (two for signals and horn and high-low), and wire in a small switch on the back for the tach.

As for how hard it was.... You can't really do the switch without a fair amount of electronics, since it's not compatible with the stock set up at all. And the first set-up I had was probably harder than the rewiring project you see above.

What about the Pingel switches?  Spidey has five buttons on his left: horn, hi beam, left turn, right turn, and motogadget toggle.  I take it the first four (and start + run on the right housing) can't just be wired up to the existing harness?