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Well, here it is December and I think the painter’s got his nose in the paint can. Suckin’ fumeswill make you goofy. Apparently, it’s made this guy goofy enough to forget I was planning on paying him to do this job.I sent the guy the sheet metal in August. It is still not here. I may have to go shoot the bastard; when he’s done….
At this point, there’s still a few things we can do before the tank and fenders arrive. One of those items is the wiring.
Wiring a bike for most guys probably the single most tedious task of a bike project.To me, it can be somewhat therapeutic. This is a job that requires a lot of patients – so take a few deep breaths before you start.
The electrical system of a motorcycle can really be broken down into four distinct sections.Lighting, Instruments, Ignition, and Charging. Most wiring harnesses you see in the Custom Chrome and Chrome Specialtiescatalogs, as well as most others, are built to handle the lighting and DC power distribution. They typically consist ofan electrical box which contains the flashers, breakers, the starter relay, and an L.E.D. panel to help you T-Shoot which circuits are working properly.Many seat-post mounted systems like the one picuted below will also have an integrated key switch as part of the package.Most of these systems will NOT tell you how to completely wire anignition, charging system, or speedo / tach system. It also then goes without saying that the wiring harness will NOTtypically provide all the wire and connectors you will need to wire the ignition, charging system, orinstrument system. For this article, we are going to stick mostly to the lighting portion of thetask, and hit the ignition, charging, and instrument system later.
The backbone of the electrical system on a bike is the wiring harness. I procured this one from Custom Chrome. It’s a seat-postmounting type for use with a single piece tank (with no dash.) It comes complete with instructions,solder connectors, a 30 amp circuit breaker, and an L.E.D. panel which will give you an indicationof which circuits are working and which ones are not.
It mounts on the seat post where most stock Softail’s have a coil system mounted.
The photo below shows the box in place. We had to use a couple of washers behind the boxbecause of an interference with the front oil tank brackets. You can see, the lower bung on theseat post is very close to the oil tank mount.
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