Wiring up the trail
No Lighty No Happy
When I got the bike there wasn’t any lighting of any sort, it had all been smashed or torn off. I slapped on an ignition, a moped headlight and a tail light just so I’d be able to ride it last fall. The shifting lever was also at a bad angle and had been welded right to the shaft so I had no way to adjust it. The only option would be to pull everything apart and replace it. Now that wrenching season is upon us I’m getting all that back in working order.
First up the shifting lever. I cut the shaft clean off so I could remove the ignition side cover and ended up needing to pull the clutch side as well.
In the bottom middle of the engine you can see a little nub where I hacked off the old shifter lever
I ended up having to pull the clutch side cover and pull the clutch and a bunch of other things in order to get the junk shaft out. It ended up being a bunch of work just to get a lever that I could adjust. Oh well it’s done now, while I had things apart I cleaned the oil strainer filter thing and replaced the engines oil seals. I had ordered a cheap gasket set from ebay/thailand and threw that in there as well, however the gaskets were shit and the engine leaked oil everywhere once it was back together. I just cut my own out of a roll of karropak and it’s good to go now.
Since I had the engine off the bike I cleaned it up and painted it black. I’m a big fan of black engines, hides all of the oil and gunk that builds up on them over time.
Cleaned up and ready for paint
Painted!
Moving on to wiring I decided to ditch pretty much everything original that was left on the bike, I kept the rectifier, foot brake switch, the ignition coil and the cdi box but all the old wiring harness and stuff ended up in the trash.
I picked up a small sealed lead acid battery that I was able to fit into the frames battery compartment, a 12v voltage regulator, some turn signals, turn signal controls, LED flasher relay, turn signal/horn/light switch all in one assembly and a trail tech vector digital speedo. I found a cool looking rando motorcycle headlight at the junkyard to replace my temporary moped headlight.
New old headlight
I pulled everything off the bike and began to wire it up, the gist of it is I wanted the keyed ignition switch to cut off everything from the battery as well as kill the engine when turned to the off position. With the key in the on position the battery will be brought back into the circuit and run the turn signals and tail/brake lights and when the light switch is turned on the headlight and speedo backlight will be turned on. All my diagrams are pencil drawings so unfortunately I don’t have anything I can post right now.
All apart for easy access
Made quite a mess in the process.
Nice and tidy workspace
Amazingly it all worked out in the end. The only thing I ran into after everything was wired up was I had my rear turn signals switched around, but that’s just two wires I had to switch and it’s good to go now.
About the only thing I want to add to the bike is maybe a USB port for charging my phone but for all practical purposes the trail is done!.
Wired up and back together
From the back
