I’ve been bitching about this wiring harness for a while now. My main issue was that a lot of what used to be hidden away in the old headlight housing is now exposed due to there being no room for it in the new ones. This meant that most of the block connections had to be simply insulated with electrical tape and bound together down the side of the headstock. Considering this was a bit of a bodge and not very sightly, I actually think I managed to make it quite neat and tidy. However, I’ve been wanting to sort it for a long time because I’d be embarrassed to ever take it to a garage like that if I ever needed to (MOT approaching) or to sell it like that.
So the order of the day was to put these unsightly block connectors under the tank and in front of the engine where there is a small amount of space, hopefully, just enough to fit said connectors.
Removing all the tape and zip ties from my little arrangement was quite worrying because my main concern regarding this whole operation was that I’d actually done a good job of insulating it the first time around and that I would ruin all that good work and do a worse job this time around. Even though I was only riding with this bodge insulated harness for a few months, thus far it had actually done it’s job pretty well. Once I got down through all the tape to the actual block connectors I discovered that they were still dry even through all the horrible British weather that I’d been riding in lately. You’d think this would make me happy - knowing that I’d done an ace job of protecting the notoriously shite suzuki electrics from the peril of the elements, but actually I was more gutted and worried that I wouldn’t be able to meet the same standards again. But it’s too late for that now.
The new strategy for hiding this harness was, like I said putting it under the tank and in front of the engine. This is infinitely easier said than done because what I didn’t anticipate before my first encounter with motorcycle wiring, when I was fitting my headlights, is that wiring looms are disobedient little f*ckers and it’s nearly impossible to get them to go where you want them to go. In fairness, this is only really because when the bike was built, the wiring harness was designed to follow a certain path through the bike, be attached to the frame a certain points and all the wires are designed to be the right lengths to comfortably reach where they’re supposed to go so when you alter that, it becomes tricky. To add a little extra maneuverability I cut the little plastic clamps that hold the loom to the inside of the frame, this helped a lot towards letting me reposition it in a way that allowed everything to fit as nicely as possible into the new space.
After I’d figured that out, it was just a case of connecting everything back up without insulating it, just to make sure it all fitted correctly, then insulating all the block connectors, soldering the indicators and headlight connections back together and then using zip ties to keep the whole thing as far away from the engine and with as little stress on the wires and connections as possible.
The result of all this is that I no longer have a collection of block connectors running down the side of the headstock which looks a lot nicer and the connections are positioned under the tank and behind a piece of the frame which almost certainly gives them better protection from the rain. The only thing I’m not too happy about is that the whole harness doesn’t look as tidy, but it’s hidden away under the tank so the bike looks better from the outside but when you take off the tank, the loom follows a kind of winding path going from the battery, up the RH side of the frame then snakes over to the other side of the bike then back to the middle where the block connectors meet behind the headstock. I’m just glad it’s all done to be honest, wires are hard.
