The last major repair I wanted to make to my diesel bike, before putting it into winter storage, was rebuilding the wiring harness. I got the bike as a bare frame, so I had to make a harness from scratch. At the time, I had no experience building an electrical system, nor did I know what proper wiring practices were. I was a simple mechanical engineer, and all I knew was (shudder) electrical tape, zip ties, and hard plastic spade connectors.
Since I didn't originally intend to make the bike road legal, the first system was a crude total-loss setup to turn the headlight and taillight on. As the project progressed, I added new circuits and zip-tied them to the original wires. By the time I had finished the bike, I had added brake lights, a horn, and a charging circuit, and the harness looked like this:
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| Good luck tracing THAT out |
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| Why on earth would I put the fuse THERE?! |
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| Different angle, just as bad... |
Obviously, something needed to be done. I had used a mash up of different wire colors, none of which matched, and it was nearly impossible to find any shorts that occurred. To fix the problem, I bought 5 different wire spools, a box of Honda-style bullet connectors, a real crimping tool, and set to work.
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| This is a beautiful sight to me. That is why I'm a geek. |
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| Much Better |
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| There! Not bad for a mechie. |
Nice work… I think of wiring as water pipes… only the water is invisible. :)
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