Cheap Neck Warmer

Recently the morning ride has gotten chilly.  I have never gotten around to getting cold weather gear.  I just bundle up with whatever I got.  But at the moment what I would really kill for is a neck warmer.  I went to walmart and all they have right now for the cold is beanies, and gloves.  I could use some leather gloves...  But anyway, I saw an easy fix to the neck warmer dilema.  I purchased a nice thick beanie, cut the top off and whadda-ya-know, a cheap neck warmer.  And it is actually ridiculously warm.  I don't think I will be replacing this.  Just need someone to sew up the frayed edge so it doesn't unravel too quickly.

It might look a little ghetto being frayed at the bottom, but that will get fixed.  Not to mention, once you put on a jacket, you cover the frayed bottom edge.  There is virtually NO air getting to my skin between my jacket and my full-face helmet.  It's totally awesome.  This is one of those things that you think of, feel like a genius cause it works soooo incredibly well, and when you share it with other people, they look at you like you are a crazy...  Hey, most geniuses are, so it's all good.

Wiring the Horn Relay

Honestly, part of me wishes I had just ordered a horn wiring kit online.  If you don't have any wire, any crimp connectors, or any heat shrink tubing, you will end up spending some serious money trying to wire this.  Although, it can be argued that without doing everything custom for this bike, it wouldn't have come out so neatly.  After going in circles without the wiring diagram, and getting rough drawings of what other people have done, I was still left trying to figure it out myself for the most part.  The first thing I really spent a lot of time trying to figure out, was which wire in the harness was the horn switch.  I spent hours and hours pulling apart the block connection that leads to the left hand-controls, and using a multimeter trying to figure out which wire does what and was soooooo confused.  Nothing was working the way I would have expected it to.  I needed to find the wire coming back from the switch that signaled to turn on the horn.  But then I realized that the power wires for the horns are coming from the hand control wire-harness.  Meaning there is no extra wire somewhere signaling that the switch is closed.  So suddenly I was looking at cutting into the wiring.  Somewhere on the net, it said I should tap into the green wire in the headlight.  But I just couldn't figure out how that would make the relay trip when I pushed the horn button.  I was stumped.
After getting an ear-full about spending so much time on the bike, and no time studying for my classes, we went out to eat sunday night.  And I swear I was listening to her, I honestly swear that I was, and suddenly that dim little lightbulb turned on in my head.  I don't need to cut or splice any wires at all.  All I need to do is make a wire with a male spade at one end and female spade on the other, and connect one side of the relay coil to one of the positive wires for the horns.  Problem solved.  When I press the horn button, power goes into the horn wires, which is re-routed to the relay coil, causing the relay switch to throw, sending power to the new horns.  Bingo.  No cutting, no splicing, and no messing with the fuse block, or any other wires down there.

What you will need:

1.  SPST relay that came with my horn, and which you may need to purchase yourself if your horns did not come with them. 

2.  Roughly 10 feet of 14 ga red insulated wire and 10 feet of 14ga black insulated wire.  I got the stuff at the automotive store that has more of a rubbery flexible insulation than the cheap stuff with hard plastic insulation.

3.  One ten amp regular sized blade fuse.

4.  One inline weatherproof fuse block that holds a single blade fuse

5.  Heat shrink tubing

6.  Various crimp connectors.  One suggestion here:  just by the regular old kind of connector.  At first I got some fancy crimp connectors with the heat shrink tubing as part of the connector, and these ended up failing me big time.  When I shrank the tubing on the connector, it released some kind of residue into the joint which caused half of the connections to fail.  I literaly tested continuity between one end of a connector and the other end of the connector(with the wire already removed) and there was no continuity.  Whatever that white residue is, it really fouled up my connections, and I had to start over.  

This is the basic layout of a SPST relay:
                                  ________________
                                  |          ___            |
                                  |           87            |
                                  |  | 86           85|    |
                                  |                          |
                                  |           |              |
                                  |______30______ |

Do not laugh at my lame drawing of a SPST relay.  Just run the connections in the way I ran them in this photo:

This is where I located everything:

 I tucked the relay and fuse next to the airbox behind a little plastic cover.  I was really surprised at how well this worked out.  You can also see where I connect to the original positive horn lead, and that the negative is taped off to prevent corrosion. 

Here, I have put the plastic cover back over the area completely concealing the relay and fuse.

 

Here you can see how I followed the main harness all the way back to the battery.  And I'm sure you can figure out how to attach the wires to a battery, but here's my photo, just cause I took one, and I might as well put it in here:

I think that about sums it up...

Cracked Fork Brace

When in tight high speed turns on highways and such I was noticing some slightly scary shaking in the wheel.  It almost felt as if the wheel was moving independently of the handlebars.  I was reading online and it seems that the fork brace is known to have stress cracks, and eventually break.  This will cause the bike to go into a tank slapper and you hitting the ground.  Not cool.  I wasn't certain this was really my problem, until i pulled the fork brace...

 Yes, I know my aluminum is seriously oxidized.  I have serious work to do with every piece of aluminum on this bike. 

You can see the stress crack in the aluminum.  There is a couple more cracks elsewhere.  This piece of aluminum looks fancy when it's on the bike, but it is cheap cast aluminum and only 1/8" thick.  I plan on making a nice replacement, but to get me home safely I just cleaned up a scrap piece of aluminum laying around the shop, put a few holes in it and slapped it on the bike.

Once again, this is just to keep me on the road safely until I can make a nice replacement.  But working full time and taking college classes really limits the amount of time you get to spend working on the bike.  I know a lot of you out there understand that.

Mounting the Horns

From what I have read, the stock horns only draw roughly 1 amp, whereas these Candlepower horns will be drawing 4 amps per horn.  The general consensus is that stock wiring will not handle this, and many people have evidently fried their stock wiring by going the lazy route and not using the relay.  So I am definitely going to be wiring in that relay.  Unfortunately I am extremely tight on money at the moment and the supplies for wiring the relay will have to wait till my wallet is a little thicker.  But at least I can mount them!

First I had to drill a hole in the mounting brackets(if you can call them that) that came with the new horn.  There is an extra hole that is needed for a small stabilizing tab on the bike.

Then to just bolt on the horn...

 
And there it is, horns mounted.  By far this will probably be the easy part.  In this picture you can see how the horns would look much better if I painted the front side with a chrome color paint.  All that black plastic is lookin kinda lame.  I am by far not a fan of chroming everything on a bike, but this large cluster of black plastic has got to go.

Sidenote... you can also see the turn signal stems have been replaced in this last photo.  

Horns in the Mail

Woohoo!  New horns have arrived in the mail!

This isn't just me wanting louder horns, the previous horns didn't work at all.  These were the cheapest horns I could find that weren't the el-cheapo stock type.  They were only 32.99 on Amazon.  They are made by candlepower.  For some reason, the visible side is just black plastic and the rear is faux-chrome. 

This makes no sense to me, but when I get a little motivation it wouldn't be that hard to paint the black to a chrome look.  The drawback with this horn kit, is that I received no instructions.  You get exactly what you see in this picture-two horns and a relay.  Fortunately, today we have google, and google can find an answer to just about anything. 

Front turn signal stems

In order to get the bike registered I needed to get it inspected, and in order to get it inspected, I would need to fix that hanging turn signal you can barely see in the previous post's photo.  I really should have taken more photos of this process, but it really wasn't too dificult.  I purchased some replacement front turn signal stems from jcwhitney.

Tools needed:
-vise or hard surface and a c-clamp
-small crescent wrench and phillips screwdriver
-sharp blade
-handheld drill or a drillpress
-Letter "G" drill bit jobber length
-electrical tape

Step 1:  Unbolt the two bolts holding the headlight, and just let the headlight dangle.

Step 2:  Unscrew the speedo cable.

Step 3:  Disconnect the individual wires leading to the turn signals.

Step 4:  Remove the nut holding the turn signal/stem to the bike.

Step 5:  CAREFULLY split the tape or wire-wrap and remove it, so the individual wires are hanging out of the turn signal assembly.

Step 6:  Remove the phillips head screw holding the signal to the stem.

Step 7:  Pull the stem away from the signal, and pull the wires out, being careful with the bullet connectors at the ends of the wires.

Step 8:  Grab your new stems in a vise with the threaded side up.  The rubber is hollow, so it will crush a little bit, but don't tighten the vice until you collapse the rubber.  It is not round, so it wont spin in the vice.  (I highly suggest you refrain from trying to do the next step while holding the stem between your knees)

Step 9:  Drilling out the barrel is tricky.  If you think you can be careful, then chuck up the letter "G" drill bit and start drilling it out.  If you are too aggressive, the barrel will detatch from the rubber and spin, and you have ruined your new stem.  The trick is to just be really nice, and when you see the barrel twisting, be careful not to let it twist too far and break free of the rubber.  Don't ask how I learned this.  If you want to do it the smart way, I would start with a 1/4 inch drill(or letter "E", exactly the same drill bit), then step to an "F", then step to the "G".  Three drill bits will cost a couple bucks.  Another stem is 8 plus shipping.  Your call. 

Step 10:  Once you have opened up the ID of the barrel with the drill , you can start to reassemble.  But this is the trickiest part of the whole process.  Getting the three wires through the new stem.  I acheived this miraculous(not exagerating) feat by taping a short skinny piece of coat hanger to the longest wire.  Then taping the second longest wire and taping it to the longest wire, but below the coat hanger, and preferable inline with the coat hanger.  Then taping the third wire to the other two in such a way as to create the smallest diameter bundle as possible.  I wish you the best of luck, and oodles of patience while getting the wires through the stem.
Afterthought:  what could have been done to simplify step 10, would have been cutting off the bullet connectors, feeding the wires through, then crimping some new bullet connectors on the wires.  That would have been less stressful, but cost a few bucks more. 

Step 11:  Once the wires are through, reconnect the signal with the stem using the large phillips screw.  Once this has been reattached, you will need a roll of electrical tape, and a friend.

Step 12:  starting as close to the stem as possible, start wrapping all three wires into one bundle with the electrical tape.  Remember to leave yourself about 5 inches of unwrapped wire at the ends in order to reconnect everything.

Step 13:  Reverse steps one through four, and when you're done, adjust the headlight to the proper angle.

Another Magna Rider

Purchased this Magna August 28th, 2010.  It's a 1986 VF700C.  This is my second bike, the first being a broke-down 96 Virago 535.  Eventually I will figure out what is wrong with the Virago and with any luck convince my woman to ride it.  She thinks it is too big for her and that she will not be able to handle it.  Personally I'm not sure that bikes get much smaller than the Virago 535.  I learned on a nighthawk I think, and I'm pretty sure it had roughly the same dimensions, though I know it was only a 250.  But I am talking about the wrong bike...  The magna is really the first time I've done any real riding without a windshield, and boy did that take some getting used to.  At first I figured the problem was me.  I am somewhere between 6'3" and 6'4" depending on my slouch and how much crap I have put up with that day.  I also have very wide shoulders.  This large frame creates a very effective wind sail traveling 70 to 80 mph.  And what mast is supporting this sail?  My lower back.  Ouch.  Talk about sore.  Fortunately it seems that after several weeks of abusing my lower back in this way, my lower back muscles have gotten stronger and I only have problems on severely windy days or longer rides.  Sweet.  Cause we all know a windshield takes away from the look of the bike.