Low Speed Low Side, Wiring Advice Needed

[BlueRidgeBoy]

I low sided my baby (98 RT) yesterday leaving my office parking lot (28 degree tires, recently sealed pavement and a little sand from last week's snow). The little plastic sacrificial engine gaurd did its job. The right mirror popped off and the two turn signal wires were pinched between the fairing and the pavement as the bike slid along. This destroyed the insulation and broke most of the conductor strands. My question is: are these two wires (one brown and one blue) part of some huge wiring harness, as I fear, or are they terminated somewhere where it would be easy to replace them?

 

Thanks for your help.

 

Matt

[TMH]

I don't have my wiring diagram or my similar bike in front of me, but why not just trace them back until you get to good wire and solder on some new leads? These wires don't carry much current, and I think are only about 16 ga, so they are easy to work with. Then with a little heat-shrink tubing and a lighter, you can have everything sealed up and working nicely again.

 

If you don't already know, BMW uses brown wires for ground, and colored wires for "hot" (mostly).

 

To get back to where the impacted wires are still good, you might have to carefully slice some of the wire bundle covering, but just do it carefully and you should be alright. Then you can also re-cover with electric tape, and even better cover the electric tape with more heat-shrink tubing.

 

And you will be good to go - Just maybe not when on cold tires, with temps below freezing and with sand on the roadway!

 

Tom

[Ken H.]

Basically what Tom said.

 

The wires to the turn signals are part of the entire front wiring harness. But you should easily be able (or get someone to) splice them. You may have to take off the dash to get to enough slack to work with them depending upon how close to the side they are damaged.

 

Bummer about the low-side BTW. BTDT.

[SWB]

If you're no handy with a soldering gun, you could even use crimp slices available from the local hardware store, but as mentioned, be sure to also get some heat shrink tubing about 4x as long as the splice, and seal the entire electrical line.

 

I soldered all my connections, on the rational that a mechanical crimp plus vibration of a motorcycle make a good recipe for an eventual short. Soldering is a "sure thing". After I found out that BMW crimps the spark plug wires, I said "what the heck" and crimped the wire on my fog lights. Then I use shrink wrap for each wire, and a larger shrink-tubing to tie both wires together (creating it's own harness).

 

Glad you're not hurt. Maybe you can rub out some of those fairing scratches. "There are two kinds of riders, those who have fallen, and those who are about to." Ancillary: There are two kind of bikes: Those with road rash, and those with a good body shop!

[TMH]

Crimping is O.K. too, as long as you get a good crimper. Also on all crimped connections I have started to use a corrosion preventive paste to... prevent corrosion over time (which will occur in a crimped connection even if you use heat-shrink tubing over it). Find it here (among other places): http://www.awdirect.com/awdirect/catalog...&linkid=424

 

Tom