Wiring diagram refresh

[Fix]

Heya folks,

Since I'm starting the rebuild of my wire harness, I dug into some wire diagrams. The main one I found was this one.

http://webpages.charter.net/kbhahn/xs11/E-Fwire.JPG

Can anyone attest to accuracy or inaccuracy on it?

The reason I ask is two-fold. First, I want to use a good diagram. Second, I'm looking at sprucing it up in Illustrator so we can have a bigger version that's easier on the old eyes to read. You can blow this one up on a color printer alright, but it does start to get blurry. And there's enough going on already on it.

So, if the consensus is that this diagram is good to go, I'll be posting up a higher resolution version here shortly.

Thanks!

[psycoreefer]

someone else please correct me if I'm wrong but I don't believe that the neutral light ground is connected to the oil pressure switch. - my light works even without oil pressure.

I'm also pretty sure that the neutral switch isn't run through the ignition box - at least on my 79 it isn't, I can start the bike in gear.

I'd count that as two errors. You could also try searching the forum for wiring errors, as I've seen several posts people have made when they've found different mistakes.

[Fix]

I'll keep looking, thanks. Wire, wiring, error, and diagram are apparently pretty common terms in these parts. Lots of false-positives to wade through.

[psycoreefer]

sorry it was just an idea. Maybe make your hi-res version and then correct it as you find errors...

[Fix]

No worries, thanks for responding. I'm doing the hi-rez version for myself, but if folks were interested I could drop the whole thing into, say, Flash or something and make it interactive. So you could highlight a wire color, for instance.

But I'm not going to go to all that work if no one wants it. I can do the same in Illustrator for myself. I'm putting each wire color on it's own layer. Of course, if anyone has illustrator and wants a copy when I'm done they're more than welcome to it.

I'll post a non-interactive hi-rez version in any case for those that don't have Illustrator.

[natemoen]

I think it would be great to have what you are describing as a little flash file. Would.make.tracing circuits much easier.

[planedick]

Negative

someone else please correct me if I'm wrong but I don't believe that the neutral light ground is connected to the oil pressure switch. - my light works even without oil pressure.

I'm also pretty sure that the neutral switch isn't run through the ignition box - at least on my 79 it isn't, I can start the bike in gear.

I'd count that as two errors. You could also try searching the forum for wiring errors, as I've seen several posts people have made when they've found different mistakes.

I believe that the connection you refer to is just the negative or other end of the circute so the light will actually light when it's supposed to.

[crazy steve]

While the full-bike wiring diagram is useful for figuring out wire routing, I've found it's usefulness as a diagnostic tool sometimes limited and confusing. It's not so much that it contains errors, as its lack of clarity on circuit function sometimes. It's failure to show details of the inner workings of most of the stuff the harness is connected to merely lets you trace to a bad component/connection, but what happens beyond there isn't very clear. I defy you to easily tell which wire at the headlight socket is for high-beam from just looking at the wiring diagram as an example. You can puzzle some of this out, but it's not easy.

What would be really useful? A color-coded set of schematics (AKA circuit diagrams in the unit repair section of the FSM) showing the wiring diagram harness colors so you could easily go back-and-forth between the schematics and the wiring diagram when troubleshooting.

Anyway, that would be my wish list....

[3Phase]

Fix,

The schematic shows the wrong High Beam, Head (failure), Oil, and Neutral light connections.

The Oil and Neutral lights can not work as shown with one side connected to the Black ground wire and the Red/Black wire to the switches. The oil pressure and neutral switches themselves are grounds and they complete the ground circuit for their indicator lights, they do not supply any power. Grounding a grounded ground is interesting but not particularly useful.

The Oil and Neutral warning and indicator lights should get power from the Brown wire (switched power). The Oil light uses the Black/Red wire to its switch/ground and the Neutral light uses the Sky Blue wire to its switch/ground.

The schematic shows the Neutral switch connected to the Red/White wire from the pickup coil to the TCI and would kill two cylinders whenever the bike was in neutral. It should be shown connected to the Sky Blue wire and not grounding the Red/White wire from the pickup coil.

The Head (failure) warning light would be on whenever the ignition switch is on and should be connected to the Light Green wire from the RLU and the Black ground wire.

The High Beam indicator should be connected to the Yellow wire from the RLU and the Black ground wire.


So... that's most of what I've seen so far but there are probably more errors in that schematic.

[crazy steve]

The diagram Fix posted also has the headlamp hooked up wrong; the low beam is in series with the high beam (no direct ground) so would light both filaments at about 1/2 brightness on low...

Not a good diagram....

[b.walker5]

Hi Fix,

Go to C Bugs website (link in his signature file) and pull the diagram from the factory service manual. Short of drawing your own, its the most accurate one your going to get. It's not full of pretty colours but the colour key is just as useful, if not more so.

[Fix]

Thanks guys, I'll pull the one from c-bugs site and see what I can do about color coding it to the actual wires, like the one I linked. Then I can put it in a flash app to turn off and on specific wire colors.

[crazy steve]

If you're going to go whole hog, putting in a 'legend' would be great. This would identify (at a glance) what each color does; like this:

Black - ground
Dark Green - right turn
Chocolate - left turn
Red/white - TCI, handlebar switch, resistor, starter solenoid
etc, etc...

This is assuming you make your diagram colors match the factory colors.

I have yet to see a totally accurate wiring diagram for one of these; the one in my FSM doesn't even show the neutral switch, and the wire color for the oil light isn't listed in the color code. I haven't tackled a full harness install on one of these yet, so I'll probably mock it up off the bike first to make sure what's what. I've rebuilt/scratch-built a few harnesses on other bikes and it can be very time consuming....

[3Phase]

Fix,

You might be better off rolling your own schematic. The factory schematics are good but they also have issues so don't blindly accept them as Gospel: trust but verify.

I wound up making my own color schematic for my '80G but it's been a few years since I did it and I don't recall what I had to change.

[Rasputin]

Fix,

You might be better off rolling your own schematic. The factory schematics are good but they also have issues so don't blindly accept them as Gospel: trust but verify.

I wound up making my own color schematic for my '80G but it's been a few years since I did it and I don't recall what I had to change.

I for one thank 3Phase for that as I have it in my garage laminated and have blown up sections of it as well. Helps an inept electrickery person like myself so much!