Calf Eh.

I've been up to my ears in wiring the last few weeks. This connector consists of 6 wires and many of those go to the alternator so they're kind of important. Each wire was cut in half and secured with bubble gum and electrical tape that was losing it's grip. So I had just enough slack to cut it all out and soldered it up and put shrink tube on. Good as new. 

While I was at it I removed the entire harness and went through it all. I found tons of really questionable connections. I soldered them all, installed heat shrink, and then checked each wire for continuity. All should be good in the wiring department. I also ran wires for the turn signals that I will order very soon here. I then wrapped the harness again in electrical tape and put it all back together. I then went to turn the key and got nothing. Nothing. So...unwrap all that tape and start looking for the issue. I finally found it in a bad switch for the ignition. Replaced that and all was good in the world again. Taped it all back up and....done. Oh the only issue at this point was that the led indicator in the tach that goes to oil pressure would not come on with the key. I verified that the led was good by sending 12 volts directly to it. Continuity of the wire was solid. Making a jumper wire and going from the sensor wire to the block made the led light up so I was pretty sure the sensor was bad. I even used a 6 amp charger connected to the sensor body and the top (with an inline resistor) and turned it on for less than a second. This was to try and fry the gunk inside the sensor in the hopes that it would shake it loose. No good. For a bit I was worried that the issue was the fact that the sensor is supposed to be lighting up an incandescent bulb instead of an led. I wired up a relay to see if this helped. Nope. I finally broke down and bought a new/used one on ebay for 9 bones and it showed up today. Used a little plumbers tape, installed the sensor, and the led now works with the key.

This is a picture from last weekend before I got the oil pressure led sorted. Now I can control no lights, parking lights only (if I choose to run that type of turn signal which I'm not planning on), head lights, low beam, hi beam, and horn. All I have left to do for this part of the project is install turn signals, and wire up the kill switch.

Back to the Project

It's been a while since I did anything to the cafe racer but when I got home from work on Friday, there was a box on the steps. I did a little bit of work on it Friday night but not much. Too tired. Most of the work happened today. Thing hardly looks like a motorcycle at all here. 

One of the things I ordered was a set of gauges. For a while I looked into taking the stock gauges apart, rebuilding them, installing more modern faces, and upgrading to led lighting but that's a lot of work and the gauges would still be...huge. I went back and forth between these 2.5" units and some 1.9" ones. Chrome or black? I ended up going with the 2.5" model and, obviously...black.

A while ago I made a bracket to mount the ignition to. It worked with the larger gauges but with the smaller ones, it was too busy. So I made another one that is fairly well hidden. I wanted the ignition to look like it was floating. I also wanted the ignition to sit down lower and be a third sphere. It's easier to see the ignition now that the huge gauges aren't the focal point.

Much better. I got everything mounted up and then wired the gauges. The tach is easy as it only has 2 wires for the backlighting. The speedo has the same and then a + and - for each of the four led lights (hi beam, turn signals, oil pressure, and neutral). Everything seemed fine here. I don't have turn signals yet so that wire gets capped off. Hi beam is connected but I'm still wrestling with some other wiring so I don't know for sure if that's done correctly. Oil and neutral should be wired correctly but I can't start the motor either and I don't know if that makes a difference (pretty sure on the CB's the idiot light only comes on in the event of low pressure as opposed to most cars that come on with the key).

Next up was wiring in this switch. The previous owner had this bike stripped pretty well. I need/want to have enough stuff on it to keep the police at bay. So I installed a horn, and then started installing this left side control. It has the ability to run turn signals, headlights (hi and low), horn, and kill switch. Initially I was going to drill the bars and run the harness through them to hide things but the harness is damn big and I didn't like the idea of having that big of a hole in the bar. Twice. I did have to shim the bar with some tape to make the switch tight but that was easy.

This...has not been easy. Or fun. In fact...it sucks. Remember...I'm dealing with a 550 frame. 500 motor. I think a 550 harness but Im not sure (I've found a few wires that are colored such that they don't show up on schematics at all). I also don't know if the previous owner wired things the right way to begin with. I'm close to having this done but...it's not done. I've got some calls into some friends in the CB community so hopefully I'll have this squared away in a jiffy here. Stay tuned.