Re: [Tampa-Crashers] More wiring stuff.

[Jerry Jackson <jjackson@xxxxxxx>]

I start a new job next Wed (March 1st) and expect to have more free time 
and less stress.....which will leave more time for the important things 
in life (motorcycling, informal target shooting, music, family, 
etc.)..... (but I'm already hearing rumors that my 
soon-to-be-ex-employer may want to pay me an embarrassing amount of 
money to do some contracting and I may need to take them up on that)

For now, I can manage a short answer that briefly address some of the 
concerns.....

Suppose you have every component on the bike grounded separately with a 
bolt to the frame/engine case/whatever. Each of those bolted connections 
becomes a failure point from several perspectives. 1) The bolt must be 
tight. 2) Corrosion, dirt, grime, etc can (and often does) occur between 
the surfaces which results in a poor electrical connection.....which 
means no matter how tight the bolt is, you still have a poor electrical 
connection.  3) The typically dissimilar metals of the surfaces can have 
bad side effects on each other.  In some circumstances it could be 
difficult to track down electrical problems.

Contrast the above scenario with the typical arrangement of having 
separate dedicated ground wires and relatively few grounding points to 
the engine/frame/whatever and all the wires are safely tucked inside the 
harness with nicely soldered connections and/or high quality water proof 
connectors where appropriate.

Without going into a discussion of voltage drop (aka IR drop) across 
resistance in a circuit, suffice it to say you don't want to create 
opportunities for IR drops all over your vehicle.

Far as eliminating the side stand and clutch safety interlock circuits 
goes.... I'd recommend at least leaving the side-stand safety circuit 
fully functional.

Deltona Jerry




ABSDoug wrote:
>
> (For those of you familiar with this thread, you can skip to the 2nd 
> paragraph)
>
> I want to eliminate unnecessary wiring on my motorcycle. This was 
> inspired by the expiration of my clutch safety-disconnect switch & 
> later, my side-stand disconnect switch. I have rewire the entire 
> side-stand affair to sound the horn rather then kill the motorcycle. 
> The next step was to eliminate any unnecessary wiring associated with 
> the old safety-disconnect. While researching which wires are not 
> necessary, I noticed ground wires heading back from just about 
> everything powered on the bike. This got me thinking; why run a wire 
> all the way through the bike? Why have all these extra
> wires, buried in a mass of other wires, taped up, unaccessible? This 
> is when I was informed the location of grounds and grouping of grounds 
> are important and not to be fooled with. I WOULD LOVE TO LEARN MORE HERE.
>
> Loud and clear I've heard fooling with grounds is not a good idea. 
> That said, I'm pretty sure the wire associated with the safety 
> disconnects could still be eliminated. There are two wires, one for 
> the clutch disconnect and one for the side-stand disconnect. PLEASE, 
> any comments or suggestions here would be great.
>
>
>
> Doug Saylor
> 727.831.3111

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End of oilheads-digest V3 #32
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