Thinking the bike was all ready for my multi-day trip over through WV, that “illusion” was dashed a day ago when getting ready to run some local errands. Having backed the bike out of the garage, mounting up and starting it, I thought I noticed that the headlight beam projected on the garage door changed intensity when I swung the bars around to back the bike off the apron. To be sure of what I saw, I swung the bars back and forth a couple times and got what I thought I had seen to repeat. Poo! Not exactly sure what was causing it, but I certainly wasn’t going to head off on a trip with this type of unknown electrical problem. I went ahead and ran my errands and when I got back, I started the troubleshooting process.
Narrowed it down to the main harness that feeds all the connections to the bike’s instrument cluster, it branches off to the headlamp, turns signals, bar control switches, etc. That harness is routed up along the steering stem so every time the front end of the bike goes through its back-and-forth motion, that “cluster” of wires flexes to follow that motion. Nothing was apparent where a number of those wires terminated, but something was definitely wrong in the center of the clump because the light changed intensity when I jostled it around by hand. Finding the culprit involved removing the mass of wires’ ancient electrical tape, and what was left of a brittle wire loom.
It paid off. I found that a wire had broken at an OEM crimp connection where they had formed a junction with 4 of the harnesses’ ground leads. The broken end of the wire was making an intermittent connection with its original crimp connector when the harness was jostled around.
I’ve repaired the break and re-wrapped the bulk of the harness with tape. I’m waiting for a length of larger wire loom to come in so I can finish this little project so I can get back on track for my trip.
Narrowed it down to the main harness that feeds all the connections to the bike’s instrument cluster, it branches off to the headlamp, turns signals, bar control switches, etc. That harness is routed up along the steering stem so every time the front end of the bike goes through its back-and-forth motion, that “cluster” of wires flexes to follow that motion. Nothing was apparent where a number of those wires terminated, but something was definitely wrong in the center of the clump because the light changed intensity when I jostled it around by hand. Finding the culprit involved removing the mass of wires’ ancient electrical tape, and what was left of a brittle wire loom.
It paid off. I found that a wire had broken at an OEM crimp connection where they had formed a junction with 4 of the harnesses’ ground leads. The broken end of the wire was making an intermittent connection with its original crimp connector when the harness was jostled around.
I’ve repaired the break and re-wrapped the bulk of the harness with tape. I’m waiting for a length of larger wire loom to come in so I can finish this little project so I can get back on track for my trip.
