electical woes

[GARTHXS]

So my 78 is slowly losing one thing after another first it was a bad headlight , then lights out on the gauges, now the signals don't work , I suck at electrical and don't know what to do, I am tired of chasing this crap looking for brand new wiring for for whole bike anybody interested in making new wiring harnesses??

[fredintoon]

Hi Garth,
most likely Andreas has a good used harness for you. Only the harness off the exact same bike as yours will work; there are minor wiring changes between different years and models to trip up the electrically challenged.
But first try this (and you'd best do it with a replacement harness too):-
One at a time pull apart, carefully clean, lubricate with dielectric grease and put back together each and every electrical connection on the entire bike. Pay particular attention to the ground wiring connections on the frame and don't forget the fuses, they are connections too.

[XSPastor]

Many guys have found all their electrical problems magically go away when they replace the fuse block. You can get one from TC. If you haven't done this yet, it's step one when doing a serious electrical overhaul. Clean all the connections and use dielectric grease too.

[egsols]

I noticed that many of my early electrical problems found their way back to bad/loose grounds. The fuse box replacement is the first item, and it solves a lot of problems but due to the age of the bike, a lot of connections need to be cleaned and grounds checked/replaced and or tightened.

[GARTHXS]

harness

so i bit the bullet and i amgetting a new harness from andreas, and I have a newish batch of parts , it looks like ill be having fun rewiring my bike , anybody know if their is any special tools ill need

[ClarkGriswald]

Ive been thinking about building up a new harness for my honda when I get around to that point. After reading a lot of stuff on this board I consider myself lucky that my XS is doin so well (knock on wood) but I would consider building one if I needed to. The differences in the bikes is the trick. It wouldnt be bad to build a harness right on a bike (probably would be easiest).
I used to work for a robotics company where all of that stuff was hand made by a lot of talented ladies with nimble fingers.. when I started there, I was in "wire assembly" dept and had to do them as well. I did not fare that well because my hands would get torn up so bad (big hands).

Long story short, every harness we had to make was layed out on a 4x8 sheet of plywood (some were bigger). Basically the path was drawn out in sharpie or whatever and then TONS of nails pounded in to form a kind of channel. Then you would just get that form down from where it was, and lay it on a table next to a giant rack of every gauge and color of wire you can imagine. Then you read a master list of what wire needs to go from what point to what and thru which path.. when you were all done you would put ten million zip ties on there (with a gun) and finally pull the whole thing off that board. It would then go to the ladies who would put on all the connectors.. Ever try assembling a 200+ pin round connector with one of thos pin pushers? better not mess one up because if you have to cut it.. you have to cut all 200 of them off cause they all had to be perfect length. (unfortunatly I had to do that as well as assembling panels too.. ).

So its not all that hard to do a motorcycle harness, I could probably take a loose harness, tack it to a sheet of ply and carefully open it all up and make one of those forms. You could probably use the same form for all XS's but you would have to know the slight differences and have a few sheets written up for each one.

This would be an opportunity to use better quality wire if thats needed (probably just needs new).

Ive had this in my head for a while, its a ton of work but once ya did one it would be easy. With the info available on this forum it wouldnt be too hard to piece together the differences in the bikes and document it. Mabye a few donor harnesses from diff bikes could be examined.

Just a thought.

[GARTHXS]

tools?

I didn't get any reply
Before as to what tools Ill need , I have the basics will I need a soldering iron

[andreashweiss]

harness

The harness I am sending you will be plug and play. bolt on good to go, I would take some detailed pictures of routing of your exsisting harness for reference. Then leave all of the items that plug into it on the bike, Remove the old harness in pieces ites no good anyway. Start at the headlight. Start puting in the new harness as the old one comes out,Each connection will be easy to hook up as the unit it plugs into will be in ites proper place, tank sidecovers,battery,seat,battery box ,gauge cluster,headlight,bezel should be removed.

[GARTHXS]

thanks

thanks for the advice , sounds like I am going to have fun with this

[barberad]

one othe thing you might try is to route some string with some tape labels. I am sure your going to try a one for one swap but that could get a little tricky in some places like whats where under the tank. If you had say one string representing the main bundle and then tied off arms in the directions the wires split that may help. It may be seem sort of pointless, but I know it helps me when I'm rerouting contol cables. Just my $0.02.
Dan

[GARTHXS]

mods

My bike has a few body mods ie special headlight bucket and a bobbed rear fender and aftermarket tailight
And rear turn signals so it looks like I am going to need to get some new connectors , any ideas on a good source??

[GARTHXS]

plug cleaning

What do you recomend for cleaning connections , I have a can of contact cleaner what should I use to get into the nooks and crannies

[boyat68]

garthxs:

Since most contact cleaners contain some form of Tetrafloroethane, it should do nicely. The old cleaners Tetracholorine is outlawed now as to cancer causing, but it cleaned contacts nicely.

Use an old tooth brush (I save my old ones for this purpose), some Q-tips (you can cut them in half and insert them in a battery powered drill or Dremel). Some di-electric grease.

Clean the connectors with the contact cleaner, getting all the corosion out as possible. coat the pins and receivers with a thin coat of di-electric, making sure you do not have a path from pin to pin as the di-electric is current conductive. I like to coat the tips of the pins and insert the pins into the mating receiver where the conductors are insulated from one to another. That way the di-electric is only spread to its own conductor.

Your grounds have to be cleaned and the mating surface should be clean of paint or rust. All of the bullet connectors should be examined for positive connection and any suspect can be cut off and another bullet and connector soldered on.

[GARTHXS]

thanks

Got TCs fuse box in the mail today just waiting for my new harness and then I will try it out

[Axel]

question

I thought di-electric grease was non-conductive . I have gone to vaseline when I want to improve contact .