81 GS550T Full Rebuild...In Ohio

Steve is spot on the money, a simple bad earth has caused many a grown man to cry like a baby.
Scott, I like to run those braided steel earth straps between engine and frame and frame and battery, much better than an earth wire.
And ya, you are going to have get rid of the powder coating right down to the metal to get a good earth.

[Steve]

Yet another example of the old addage: If you are getting screwy results on electrical stuff, it's probably a bad ground.

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[cowboyup3371]

Well, I think I might have found the problem with my electrical system. After borrowing the test light from Steve, I found I have power at the headlight and the horn as well as the turn signal relay and tail/brake light wiring connector. I also found that when I step on the rear brake or squeeze the front lever, I would get power at that same connector. If I have the probe at the turn signal relay wiring, I have power on the orange/green wire and will get the front turn signals to light up (not flash) when I touch the light blue. If I have it connected to the flasher then only the rear turn signals light (not flash).

I then decided to make sure what my voltage was like at the battery, headlight, and taillight. I found that when connecting my black multimeter probe to the battery ground and fuse block ground points and red to the battery positive and fuse block power, I will get close to 12.5 volts. However, if I try to use another ground point on the frame where two of my harness ground wires are attached, I only get .5 volts. Although I had those two wires at the airbox side mount bolt last time, the connectors were broken so I re-terminated them and moved them to a different point on the frame. I'm thinking that new point is no good since I never did scrape off the powdercoating; consequently, I will fix that this week as I had other stuff to do today and didn't get to it.

One other worrisome note I found during my testing - I have a pretty significant voltage loss at the headlight as I found it to be 11.8v instead of the 12.5v at other places. The wiring has been cleaned up so I think I'll have to look into the headlight relay mod.

[Steve]

... I'm tired of my vehicles throwing attitudes towards me every time I turn around.

Simple solution to that is stop turning around.

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[cowboyup3371]

Wired up the fuse block and repaired, the soldering is sloppy as my skills suck, the turn signal relay wiring. But when I powered up the bike I found some problems with several areas. It's pretty strange and difficult to explain properly but suffice it say I don't have lights up front, no horn, and strange workings with the turn signals. I started to use my test light but I only have a probe end not an alligator clip so it made it a little hard to use properly. Steve offered to let me borrow his test light and so I printed off the wiring diagram and I will get back to troubleshooting tomorrow. One thing I want to look at will be how well I connected the wires into the fuse block. After talking it over, I suspect the screws are tightened against the insulation and not the actual wire so I'll look at that again.

[cowboyup3371]

Mounted the airbox with fuse block attached then started to wire it up when I found a couple of busted wires that I need to fix. Had to go buy a new wire stripper and extraction tool as both busted on me as well; I'm really beginning to hate cheap crap. I also put the battery box and r/r in but I want to put in different screws than what I had in previously so didn't finish it yet.


In other vehicle news, I verified my front locking (manual) hubs on the truck are shot. Not in a big hurry to fix it as the 4wd isn't used much but I'm tired of my vehicles throwing attitudes towards me every time I turn around.

[cowboyup3371]

No seasons here bud, 365 days a year of motorcycling weather.
Although in the dead of winter the day time high can drop as low as 12C (50F) and then it is just too cold to ride, its just crazy.

I'm more than willing to trade you the last 30 days as well as next week (supposed to drop into the 20s again) for a week's worth of 50s

[rustybronco]

No, crazy is when it's -19°F (-28°C) outside and you wished there wasn't a foot of snow in the driveway just so you could go for a ride - even if you froze your hind end off doing it.

Forget what I just said. That's insane...

No seasons here bud, 365 days a year of motorcycling weather.
Although in the dead of winter the day time high can drop as low as 12C (50F) and then it is just too cold to ride, its just crazy.

[cowboyup3371]

Duaneage's RR works great I think so you'll do fine with yours Stan. Keep it coming as I'm sure you'll finally be ready to go by the end of the year. I don't quite remember you saying but what are your seasons like.

Actually, the bike has been out for a couple of rides already, one with Steve's son to a Goldwing get-together on New Years. It ran fine although I have a squeal and a small wobble coming from the rear end I need to check into. Plus, it still needs a carb synch and paint work on the tank. I'll say though I'm dying here for the weather to stay warm and the roads to clear off so I can get out again.

Nice going Scott, looks like she will be ready to be pressed into service this summer. Bet, you can't wait.

Ah yes, Jennifer has the RR I bought from Duaneage, one of the last ones he sold before retiring to count his money.
Still needs to see a single volt go through it.

[cowboyup3371]

Well, it's been some time now and crappy weather so I haven't felt like doing much on my bike. I bought a new 7" headlight bucket from GSGeezer, thank you very much, as I intend to swap out my current headlight for a LED model sometime in the near future:



I also finally decided to take a couple of days vacation from work (long time coming) to make this a five day weekend. Although most of my cabling work was done a couple of weeks ago, I took some time today to paint the mounting bracket and have the airbox ready to install tomorrow. I will remove the harness side of the fuse block wires and connect them to the new block tomorrow and then insert the fuses that came with the new block.



Finally, I decided to upgrade my R/R from the older Honda one I bought from Duaneage in 2010 (THANK YOU SIR). It's done its job well for the last few years but is wearing out as I found a bare wire close to the R/R itself.





So of course I bought a new Polaris SSH-775. I wired up the three stator wires (in brown with yellow shrink wrap) and the battery and ground wires in the blue shrink wrap. The inline fuse is still a 20amp one but I may change that out to a 25amp based on some of the reading I did.



I'll mount it up tomorrow and then work on installing my new speedometer/tachometer tomorrow before heading back to the grindstone on Thursday.

[cowboyup3371]

Finished creating the basic layout today for the fuse block:





Then went over to fit it to the bike. After some fighting with the airbox mounts, I found I'll have to redesign the layout as the relay is hitting up against the hose from the brake reservoir (phone died before I could take pictures). One thought is to place the relay on the back side of the airbox but I'm not sure if that's going to be the best one.

[cowboyup3371]

Made the mounting bracket for the fuse block and the relay out of a 22 gauge steel sheet. I'll have some cleaning up of the edges left to do and will paint it. I also need to find some 1/4" spacers from Ace tomorrow to support the block as the button head screws I used don't fit well with it flush