Auxillary power source on my SV650S
Oct 11, 2010 Transportation
With the temperatures starting to get colder here in Northern Indiana I decided that I wanted to get some heated hand grips for my SV650s. In order to run these in an appropriate way I wanted to have an auxiliary electronics setup so power would only be on when the key is turned on. An example of this in a car would be the power circuit that connects your car stereo as it only runs when the key is turned. Doing some research I found a website talking about Distribution Block / Power Relay setup. I don’t want to repeat all of the information posted there as they did a good job of creating diagrams and giving great detail of their setup. I decided to follow most of this guide except put my own twist to things. My shopping list is as follows:
- 12V 30A automotive relay
- In-line fuse with 15A fuse
- Quick connects to splice into the tail light line
- 18 gauge wire
- Female spade crimp on ends (I had a package of these around the house)
- Shrink tube
- Hopkins 48175 24 In 4-Flat Vehical and Trailer Connector Kit x2
- Industrial strength Velcro
- Twin cigarette lighter adapter connection
- Solder (I had this laying around the house)
- In-line fuse holder that holds the 8A fuse that was in the cigarette lighter adapter
My tools list:
- Allen wrenches to remove driver seat
- Soldering iron
- Wire cutters / strippers
- Phillips head screwdriver
- Craftsman multimeter
- Matches and a candle – I did not have a hair dryer or heat gun to shrink the heat shrink tubing. Be careful with this method as to not burn your shrink tube/wires.
In the Canyon Chasers article they used a Dual-Row barrier block with a jumper kit to make all of their connections to. I originally thought about doing this and bought the parts to do so but ended up returning them. When you look at these barrier blocks you will notice one thing. All of the exposed metal contacts of the screw heads. I did not want to risk any kind of metal piece making contact with all of these connections which is why I chose the trailer connector kit. This trailer connector kit provides two great features. The first is that the connections are protected and not going to make contact with anything in the bike. These connections can also withstand the outside elements as they are made for trailers and we all know people don’t just haul trailers on sunny days. The second feature I liked about these is the fact that if I wanted to change things up in the future I just had to unplug the connection. No tools necessary except for removing the seat. Only downside to these connections (which could be looked at as a plus) is that they are on the difficult side to disconnect the male and female sides. I won’t have to worry about things bouncing apart while riding but sure makes it a pain to switch out devices. Thankfully I won’t have to switch out electronics on the male end very often if ever after install.
When I started to install all of the parts I found under the seat a plastic “post” that I could easily Velcro the relay to so it would not be floating around inside the bike.
After a bit of cutting, stripping, soldering and heat shrinking I ended up with this “wiring harness”.
In hind sight I would have made one change to this setup. One of my cousins made a mention to me that I should have heat shrink tubed the wires coming from the trailer connector to where they are soldered to each of the black and red wires. This would have cleaned things up a bit to make things look a little better. However I am still pleased with how it turned out and it could have been worse. I will mention that I made the white and yellow connections the ground and the brown and green the hot wires. This was so that the one male pin on the female trailer connections would be exposed and not cause any problems if there was nothing plugged into these connections. All that is missing from this is the wire that connects to a power source that is only on when the key is turned on. In this case I chose the rear license plate light to tap into.
After a little bit of fiddling with the wires trying to get them the way I wanted everything was installed.
I pulled out my trusty Craftsman multimeter and checked to make sure my wiring was working the way it should.
I did not take any pictures of the wiring harness that I made that connects the cigarette lighters into the bike but there is one under both the rider and passengers seats. A picture of the placement of the rear adapter is shown below.
I did test this and plugged my cell phone to make sure that it would charge. I would like to make a mention to remember when removing the ends off of the cigarette lighter adapter that you remember/mark which is the center pin connection wires and which is the outside cylinder connection. Since this is DC current it is important to remember that.
Now in the future when my heated grips get here I can run the wires for that and solder them to the male ends of the trailer connectors and be plug and play. No need to modify the base relay setup. This is why it was a good idea to make as neat as possible this original wiring as you won’t have to hack apart the wiring to add/remove things. Just plug/unplug the items and you are good to go! Hope this helps somebody else decide to tackle a project like this. This whole project only took a few hours to complete.
Tags: DIY, Electrical, Motorcycle, SV650
Snowblower won’t start
Jan 9, 2010 Home Improvement
So living in Northern Indiana and being a new home owner I get to take part in snow removal in my driveway. I was given an older Craftsman snow blower from my Dad as he had several. The most recent time I went to start it the pull cord only came all the way out without trying to turn the motor over. After a quick phone call to my Dad to find out if he had ever experienced this (and he had not) then it was time to start taking things apart!
Tools:
- Socket set
- Socket extension bar to get better reach
I was able to remove the 4 nuts holding the pull cord mechanism on and find the problem easily. The ratchet that catches some stops to turn the motor over came out of place and was laying in the cylinder behind the pull cord. After putting this piece back in place everything worked well! Pictures are below of the process.
Tags: Craftsman, DIY, Fix, snow, snowblower
