The penguin's motorcycling and Jeep blog

Sunday, August 10, 2008

Motorcycle wiring sucks

I am currently engaged in trying to get my fuse block installed on the Nightstrom. To do that, I had to first find a place to put the fuse block. I finally decided I could re-arrange the ABS relay and fuses into a more compact arrangement and put the fuse block in the area behind the battery where those are located. Now I have to fish the rear brake wire out from under the coolant reservoir and tap in to it for my relay that will turn the fuse block on and off, and find a place to put that relay. It's looking like I might have to take the rear rack off my bike to get the side cover off to find a place to put the relay. Which also requires taking the Givi luggage racks off the bike because they either block access to the rear rack bolts or are blocking the removal of the panel I need to take off.

All I wanted to do was install a simple wire harness and fuse block, not disassemble my bike! Oh well, at least I still have my KLR to ride to work tomorrow...

-- Badtux the Dissassembling Penguin

2 comments:

Gordon said...

I do not recommend doing those changes for a while as they might void the warranty should you need it. It's your call, of course.

Motorcycle wiring is a hell of a lot more complicated than it used to be. Or needs to be. A lot of it is emmissions or anti-lawsuit stuff that we had no need for in the old days.

BadTux said...

They would certainly void the wiring warranty on the parts I relocated. On the other hand, I would not use the wiring warranty anyhow since I certainly know how to change a fuse myself without help from Suzuki. According to the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act it is illegal to void the warranty on the whole bike for work done to one part of the bike. Of course, Suzuki is famous for violating that law and forcing you to file a lawsuit against them.

I am going to take a 4,000 mile trip this fall (!!!) and I need the heated grips, heated vest, and GPS wiring to be all operational at that time. If I can find a place to stuff the servo, I may also add electronic cruise control (I think I can stuff it into the back of the tail immediately in front of the headlights, it just depends on whether the cable is long enough to make it to the throttle pull, most people stuff the servo under the right side panel for that reason but this is a California bike so it has a charcoal canister taking up that area). So I need to get the electrical wiring for the auxiliary fuse panel done before the trip, warranty or no.