A solid eight hours on the bike this week due to taking a day off work to eek out the Bank Holiday weekend. Obviously the wiring is still an ongoing best guess situation but I managed to change all the connectors for the left side switchgear (lights, horn, etc) along with their corresponding partners on the main loom. I have a great colour A3 wiring diagram as I have mentioned previously so when I popped open the original ‘Lego’ switchgear I could see that all the wires matched and went where they should. So…the first snip was to remove the original switchgear…no going back from here.
Old switch and new switch. Contemplating the cut….
Wasn’t so bad after all.
After removing the original switchgear I cut off all the connectors on the loom and the new switch and replaced them with brass bullet connectors. Now I know a lot of people don’t generally like them but I have found these ones really good with a great tight fit and were simple and quick to crimp closed on the wires. I used some heat shrink insulation over all the connectors…which I didn’t get a photo of…doh! Rather I got one of the heat shrink being applied. Woohoo!
…and the next bunch!
As an old bike chunks of the wiring had been replaced over the years, making the following of the wiring diagram difficult. For instance one set of four wires, shrink wrapped, were all different at one end of the run to the other and when they entered a connector block they were all different colours again the other side! None of which matched the original. This is going to be difficult to work out. I have managed, by process of elimination plus some guesswork, to wire up the rear indicators and separate the tail/stop lights. On the switchgear I have three or four wires I am not sure about as the wiring diagram that came with the switchgear is not very clear and the new switch has a separate pass and horn, rather than the combined tilt switch on the original switchgear which has resulted in more wires on the loom and less on the new wiring. My brain had reached meltdown after eight hours so that conundrum will be left for another day.
Some decisions were made with regards the seat too. Originally I had decided to just go and buy a custom made seat for about £175 in the flat tracker/brat style that I wanted. However, a trip through YouTube made me consider building my own by chopping about the original seat pan. I have since binned that idea given the shape of the pan rising at the rear and I want a very flat seat.
My father’s neighbour, who blasted the tank, fabricated and welded in the petrol cap and then powder coated it all for nothing (top bloke Lee!) has offered to make us a seat pan out of alloy. This will clearly be a better job than I could do and will be cheaper as I don’t have the correct tools to be cutting and shaping alloy sheet. So the plan is that a flat alloy sheet will be the basis of the seat which I will then take to a local upholsterer to get an idea of their ability to make what I require and within budget. With that decision made I used an angle grinder for the first time to lop off a couple of lugs on the frame to allow the seat pan to sit flush on top of the frame rails as the lugs protruded above the frame. Once ground off the bare metal was painted.
Before…
…and after (but before filing and paint).
All in all, I am happy with the way things are going although there is still a lot more to do with the wiring taking up the bulk of the next few months. To break up that brain freezing complexity, I shall wrap and put the exhausts on in the near-ish future. Feel free to comment or advise!
