Back story to this is that a little over five years ago I decided to update the handlebar controls on my 60+ year old HD FLH to a set of newer units that had larger buttons that my clumsy pinkies could get to while wearing gloves. The original install did not go well. I ended up parking the bike once I diagnosed the immediate issue and fixed it but that still left a lot of schmutz to be dealt with. It ended with me having to move most of the harness connections from between the tanks where they no longer fit neatly and out and into the headlight nacelle. Along the way a fair number of them were changed from weatherpak connectors to Deutsch ones. The Deutsch units are smaller and take less space; a plus when space is limited. They are slightly harder to work with and assemble but plug together a lot more easily than the W-p's which have to have all the pins perfectly aligned with their sockets or fuggedaboudit. I did ride once after that but found that the rear brakes had finally dide of old age and obsolescence. That fact necessitated a complete swap out of the mish-mosh that was there and a plug in of a new GMA dual piston assembly.
Segue to now. For Christmas I bought myself a self cancelling turn signal module. This was self preservation on my part; most current generation drivers have no clue what hand signals mean and tend to think you are flipping them off for being idiots...(well that is true but not the primary purpose...) The SDI unit that got recommended to me had one major virtue; totally self contained and no input needed from the speedometer. About the size of an old fashioned butane lighter, it fit nicely in place of the old flashers but.......... Big BUTT installing it meant I had to deal with the wiring harness and what I found was that I needed to revisit and rework a major amount of what I had put there, not so much because it was wrong but more because I needed to move a lot of wires around to successfully integrate the incoming component into the existing infrastructure. A good multimeter is your friend. So I have managed to progress, and regress, and re-progress, and re-regress and anyway you get the picture. The turn signal module works as advertised, the pink and blinkys, pink and blinky when their buttons are pushed and turn themselves off as well.
Where I am at now is tracing and re-assembling the rear fender harness to the turn signals, brake and tail light. My head hurts, my hands hurt, my back gives me about 2-3 hours of run time and then it demands equal opportunity or it seizes up.
So just a pair of close ups of what got fitted inside the headlight shroud. All the connections you see are weatherpak units. They all had to be assembled from components, shells, pins or sockets, and the little green silicone O-ring sealers. The default assembly method is to strip the wire and crimp the pin or socket on. Me? I do that plus bark up the soldering gun and add a swipe of electrical solder to the crimp to make sure I have a full mechanical connection. The amount of extra spaghetti you see is a jic bit of insurance if I ever have a connection fail and have to rebuild it; it give me clean wire to harvest and means I am not tugging on too short to begin with wires to get enough non-existent slack to attach a fresh connector.
As for the rest of it, no pictures and not likely to be any. I value my camera too much to bring it into that kind of harm's way.
Nick
Segue to now. For Christmas I bought myself a self cancelling turn signal module. This was self preservation on my part; most current generation drivers have no clue what hand signals mean and tend to think you are flipping them off for being idiots...(well that is true but not the primary purpose...) The SDI unit that got recommended to me had one major virtue; totally self contained and no input needed from the speedometer. About the size of an old fashioned butane lighter, it fit nicely in place of the old flashers but.......... Big BUTT installing it meant I had to deal with the wiring harness and what I found was that I needed to revisit and rework a major amount of what I had put there, not so much because it was wrong but more because I needed to move a lot of wires around to successfully integrate the incoming component into the existing infrastructure. A good multimeter is your friend. So I have managed to progress, and regress, and re-progress, and re-regress and anyway you get the picture. The turn signal module works as advertised, the pink and blinkys, pink and blinky when their buttons are pushed and turn themselves off as well.
Where I am at now is tracing and re-assembling the rear fender harness to the turn signals, brake and tail light. My head hurts, my hands hurt, my back gives me about 2-3 hours of run time and then it demands equal opportunity or it seizes up.
So just a pair of close ups of what got fitted inside the headlight shroud. All the connections you see are weatherpak units. They all had to be assembled from components, shells, pins or sockets, and the little green silicone O-ring sealers. The default assembly method is to strip the wire and crimp the pin or socket on. Me? I do that plus bark up the soldering gun and add a swipe of electrical solder to the crimp to make sure I have a full mechanical connection. The amount of extra spaghetti you see is a jic bit of insurance if I ever have a connection fail and have to rebuild it; it give me clean wire to harvest and means I am not tugging on too short to begin with wires to get enough non-existent slack to attach a fresh connector.
As for the rest of it, no pictures and not likely to be any. I value my camera too much to bring it into that kind of harm's way.
Nick
