FJRed
Well-known member
I bought a new 2007A in February and with all the friggin’ snow we had here in Vermont this winter, I had plenty of time to futz around with the bike before I could ride it. While I was waiting for the glacier :cold: around my house to melt, I did a bunch of stuff to the bike and took lots of pictures. I'm finally getting around to posting some of my adventures in Farkling. Here's the first installment.
I figured I would definitely be adding several Farkles requiring some sort of electrical hookup. So, being the completely anal retentive person that I am, I decided the first thing I should do is strip off all of the plastic bodywork and install auxiliary fuse blocks at the front and rear of the FJR. I hate chasing intermittent problems due to flaky electrical connections so I wanted to have a solid, trouble-free place to connect things.
Here’s a simple wiring diagram of how I connected things for my fuse blocks.
I ended up using different style fuse blocks and grounding terminals for the front and rear, but the basic concept of how they are connected is the same.
For the rear, I found an inexpensive 4-fuse block at the local auto parts store and a simple terminal block for the ground connections at a “West Marine” boating supply store. I modified the 4-fuse block so that it was divided into two separate circuits with 2 fused connections each. One circuit is always hot, the other is only hot when the ignition is switched on. This gives me the option of having some things always on and some only on when the key is on.
Here’s a picture of the rear fuse block and ground terminal. There is a perfect place to mount the fuse block under the seat bracket. It took me a little while to figure out how to drill the holes for the mounting bolts in the plastic panel under the metal seat bracket. I couldn’t really get at it with a drill, so I ended up marking the locations for the holes with a pencil, then I heated the end of a long metal punch with a propane torch and used it to melt small holes through the plastic for the bolts.
I ran short pig-tails with bullet connectors off of each fuse so that it would be easy to connect things to the block. I labeled each of the bullet connectors with small bands of colored heat-shrink tube (you can just see one of them with two blue bands in the picture above) and then I put matching small dots of paint by the fuses to identify which fuse is connected to which pig-tail coming off the fuse block.
For the grounding terminal block, I cut a small piece of aluminum sheet to connect all of the terminals together, then I connected a 10Ga. ground wire directly from the battery to the terminal block. This gives me a known good ground that’s easy to connect to. This may be overkill as you could probably just connect the ground to the frame somewhere, but I figured that while the bike was “naked” it was a fairly simple and inexpensive thing to do, so I did it.
I put the relay for the “switched” half of the fuse block just behind the metal seat bracket and ran all of the wires in plastic wire loom tubing along the left side of the bike up to the front.
Here are pictures of the relay and the wire routing up to the front of the bike.
For the front fuse block, I found a good spot on the frame near the glove box on the left side. I didn’t want to drill into the frame so I made a mounting bracket out of aluminum sheet to attach the fuse block.
Here’s what the bracket looked like before I mounted it.
Unfortunately, the area wasn’t quite big enough to accommodate the same 4-fuse block I used in the rear. Instead I found a smaller fuse block at a different auto parts store, but it had 8 fuses and was still a little too big for where I wanted to mount it. So… I did some major plastic surgery to cut it down to 4 fuses on two separate circuits for “Switched” and “Hot”, I ended up with what you see in the pictures below.
Here’s the inside of the fuse block showing how I divided it into two separate circuits. Originally the center plate was one solid piece that supplied power to the fuses on both sides. I cut it in half and added small screws/nuts to hold the plates to the base.
Here’s the fuse block and bracket as it looks installed.
For the front ground terminal, I couldn’t find a spot I liked to mount the same kind of terminal strip I used in the back, so I just ran a 10Ga. Ground wire directly from the battery to a bolt on the left side near my new fuse panel and then attached 4 spade terminal pig-tails to the same bolt. (blue connectors just to the right of the fuse block in the above photo) Again, probably unnecessary, but what the hell - It’s my bike and I like it.
At the battery end of things, I fed power to the front and rear fuse blocks through separate 40-amp self resetting circuit breakers. Here’s a picture of the battery box with all of the new connections.
I used 10Ga. wire for all of the main power and ground wires from the battery to the fuse blocks. You can see the two circuit breakers mounted to the battery box in the lower left and the relay for the switched side of the front fuse block mounted at the top right. If you look real close, you’ll see some extra holes in the battery box where I originally mounted the circuit breakers and relay. They looked great there and I was sure there was enough room to clear the cowling… WRONG. The cowling fits a lot closer to the battery box in that area that I would have thought, so I relocated the components to the locations you see in the pictures. They fit just fine there with no interference from the cowling. (I did shorten the bolts coming off the circuit breakers by a little bit to make sure there was no contact with the cowling)
To control the relays for the switched side of the fuse blocks, I tapped into the blue/red wire just above the big connector in front of the battery. This is the wire that provides power to the running lights on the bike. This wire is only hot when the ignition key is on.
All of the connections I made to the FJR’s OEM wiring harness were soldered and shrink-wrapped. I tried to use soldered joints everywhere I could and every connection was sealed with shrink tubing to keep out the weather.
So far, I’ve put a little over 1,000mi. on the bike since I installed the fuse blocks and everything is working as it should. :good:
Ed.
I figured I would definitely be adding several Farkles requiring some sort of electrical hookup. So, being the completely anal retentive person that I am, I decided the first thing I should do is strip off all of the plastic bodywork and install auxiliary fuse blocks at the front and rear of the FJR. I hate chasing intermittent problems due to flaky electrical connections so I wanted to have a solid, trouble-free place to connect things.
Here’s a simple wiring diagram of how I connected things for my fuse blocks.
I ended up using different style fuse blocks and grounding terminals for the front and rear, but the basic concept of how they are connected is the same.
For the rear, I found an inexpensive 4-fuse block at the local auto parts store and a simple terminal block for the ground connections at a “West Marine” boating supply store. I modified the 4-fuse block so that it was divided into two separate circuits with 2 fused connections each. One circuit is always hot, the other is only hot when the ignition is switched on. This gives me the option of having some things always on and some only on when the key is on.
Here’s a picture of the rear fuse block and ground terminal. There is a perfect place to mount the fuse block under the seat bracket. It took me a little while to figure out how to drill the holes for the mounting bolts in the plastic panel under the metal seat bracket. I couldn’t really get at it with a drill, so I ended up marking the locations for the holes with a pencil, then I heated the end of a long metal punch with a propane torch and used it to melt small holes through the plastic for the bolts.
I ran short pig-tails with bullet connectors off of each fuse so that it would be easy to connect things to the block. I labeled each of the bullet connectors with small bands of colored heat-shrink tube (you can just see one of them with two blue bands in the picture above) and then I put matching small dots of paint by the fuses to identify which fuse is connected to which pig-tail coming off the fuse block.
For the grounding terminal block, I cut a small piece of aluminum sheet to connect all of the terminals together, then I connected a 10Ga. ground wire directly from the battery to the terminal block. This gives me a known good ground that’s easy to connect to. This may be overkill as you could probably just connect the ground to the frame somewhere, but I figured that while the bike was “naked” it was a fairly simple and inexpensive thing to do, so I did it.
I put the relay for the “switched” half of the fuse block just behind the metal seat bracket and ran all of the wires in plastic wire loom tubing along the left side of the bike up to the front.
Here are pictures of the relay and the wire routing up to the front of the bike.
For the front fuse block, I found a good spot on the frame near the glove box on the left side. I didn’t want to drill into the frame so I made a mounting bracket out of aluminum sheet to attach the fuse block.
Here’s what the bracket looked like before I mounted it.
Unfortunately, the area wasn’t quite big enough to accommodate the same 4-fuse block I used in the rear. Instead I found a smaller fuse block at a different auto parts store, but it had 8 fuses and was still a little too big for where I wanted to mount it. So… I did some major plastic surgery to cut it down to 4 fuses on two separate circuits for “Switched” and “Hot”, I ended up with what you see in the pictures below.
Here’s the inside of the fuse block showing how I divided it into two separate circuits. Originally the center plate was one solid piece that supplied power to the fuses on both sides. I cut it in half and added small screws/nuts to hold the plates to the base.
Here’s the fuse block and bracket as it looks installed.
For the front ground terminal, I couldn’t find a spot I liked to mount the same kind of terminal strip I used in the back, so I just ran a 10Ga. Ground wire directly from the battery to a bolt on the left side near my new fuse panel and then attached 4 spade terminal pig-tails to the same bolt. (blue connectors just to the right of the fuse block in the above photo) Again, probably unnecessary, but what the hell - It’s my bike and I like it.
At the battery end of things, I fed power to the front and rear fuse blocks through separate 40-amp self resetting circuit breakers. Here’s a picture of the battery box with all of the new connections.
I used 10Ga. wire for all of the main power and ground wires from the battery to the fuse blocks. You can see the two circuit breakers mounted to the battery box in the lower left and the relay for the switched side of the front fuse block mounted at the top right. If you look real close, you’ll see some extra holes in the battery box where I originally mounted the circuit breakers and relay. They looked great there and I was sure there was enough room to clear the cowling… WRONG. The cowling fits a lot closer to the battery box in that area that I would have thought, so I relocated the components to the locations you see in the pictures. They fit just fine there with no interference from the cowling. (I did shorten the bolts coming off the circuit breakers by a little bit to make sure there was no contact with the cowling)
To control the relays for the switched side of the fuse blocks, I tapped into the blue/red wire just above the big connector in front of the battery. This is the wire that provides power to the running lights on the bike. This wire is only hot when the ignition key is on.
All of the connections I made to the FJR’s OEM wiring harness were soldered and shrink-wrapped. I tried to use soldered joints everywhere I could and every connection was sealed with shrink tubing to keep out the weather.
So far, I’ve put a little over 1,000mi. on the bike since I installed the fuse blocks and everything is working as it should. :good:
Ed.
