Ground Spider Questions

[The Other Brian]

I acquired a new to me 2010 FJR with just over 11,000 miles on it this past August. The bike is parked and stripped of its

plastic to fix a rumble occurring when the wind shield retracts and to add a fuse block and a relay controlled circuit to power my heated gear.

I have read most of the threads regarding the Ground Spider issue and based on what I have read the jury is out weather it was resolved by 2010.

How can I tell if the spider is going to bite me or already has? I have not noticed any electrical issues in the few

thousand miles I have put it since its acquisition.

What can be done by me to prevent a spider bite?

 

[mcatrophy]

...How can I tell if the spider is going to bite me or already has? I have not noticed any electrical issues in the few thousand miles I have put it since its acquisition.
What can be done by me to prevent a spider bite?

No symptoms, no bite (yet).
Simplest prevention is to unplug all the spiders, check for any signs of corrosion, insert again after smearing with something that will reduce the likelihood of corrosion - I use petroleum jelly (e.g. Vaseline), others will no doubt come in with their own preference.

More complex is to remake each spider connection in another way, maybe adding an extra earth wire back to he battery negative.

On my '06 and my '10 I just used the petroleum jelly, and I ride in the UK with all its nasty weather, wintry salty roads, winter condensation dripping off the bike in the garage.

 

[Queensland Ken]

mcatrophy nailed it on the head and yep the "issue" was "supposed" to be addressed on the 2010's.

There have been spider bites involving the S7 and S6 neutral connectors on latter models and the Front Cowling Connector #3 that isn't a spider neutral connector, but has a neutral circuit within the wiring bundle.

A few posts around on the Forum.

I fixed a mates S6 bite by making up a quick and easy bypass harness, soldering pigtails onto the bridging pieces and running a neutral wire back to the battery.

Also used conductive grease on the bridging pieces, somewhat better than silicon grease in this case.

 

[road runner]

Oh no. not this again

 

[LAF]

I used a harness that a forum member made and installed that. I also took all mine apart and cleaned them, sprayed with ACF-50, and then sealed them in liquid tape. This is on my 10.

We got left out of the recall but I did not believe it was cured so made sure I did what I could. If you have it naked you can do this very easy for piece of mind. Especially if you have the nose off as they are the worst ones to get to. The harness I installed took the fans and lights onto a new/better ground path.

 

[The Other Brian]

Last evening I looked at the spiders under the headlight and the one on the left side under the storage compartment. There was no noticeable corrosion or discoloring due to heat.

My plan is to coat the contacts on each with Carbon Conductive Grease and wrap each in silicon self-sealing tape.

The combination of the grease and tape should keep out any water and prevent corrosion. I will do the same with the rest of the spiders. I ordered the carbon conductive grease from

Amazon so I will need to wait until it arrives to finish this up.

Here is the grease https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005T8ROWA/ref=pe_385040_127541850_TE_item.

Thanks all for the advice.

 

[rbentnail]

Last evening I looked at the spiders under the headlight and the one on the left side under the storage compartment. There was no noticeable corrosion or discoloring due to heat.My plan is to coat the contacts on each with Carbon Conductive Grease and wrap each in silicon self-sealing tape.

The combination of the grease and tape should keep out any water and prevent corrosion. I will do the same with the rest of the spiders. I ordered the carbon conductive grease from

Amazon so I will need to wait until it arrives to finish this up.

Here is the grease https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005T8ROWA/ref=pe_385040_127541850_TE_item.

Thanks all for the advice.

By doing as you say with what you say you should be fine. I have an '07, a model addressed specifically by the "corrective recall" but I've yet to have it done. Included in my routine winter maintenance is a check/goop of the 8 ground spiders. I use a different electrically conductive compound but no matter. IMHO just be sure to:

- do all 8 spiders,

- do them once per year,

- inspect other connectors while in the area,

- be sure to check the main ground from the battery, down low on the right.

Lots of initial research/findings here. Additional here.

 

[Harald]

Looks like you've already determined that your 2010 could still be affected by a spider bite. We have visual proof that, even though 2010's are not covered in the recall, they still have spiders in the harness: https://www.fjrforum.com/forum//index.php/topic/139511-fjrf0093-spider-failures-other-than-s4-research/?p=1068307 . I suspect that Yamaha added additional grounding to 2010 and later bikes to reduce the current through these spiders (and lessen the chance of meltdown), but there have been confirmed spider failures on "non affected" bikes.

Sound like you have a good plan to grease the spiders. Conductive grease would be best for spiders, but other connectors with separate circuits passing through would be best served by dielectric grease. I used dielectric grease for all connections (spiders and connectors) back in 2009 because that's what I had on hand. No new problems related to any of those connections and I just turned over 91,000 miles with many of those miles in the rain.

 

[Richouse]

Did you ever figure out what and how to fix your rumbling retracting windshield? Mine is doing the same thing...

 

[The Other Brian]

Yes, The left and right outer slides were binding.

Unlike the 2 center slides the outers are easily removed. Once they were removed the rumble went away. I looked closely at both and found the white plastic/nylon bushing had wear marks on the sides where they contact the slide. I polished both bushings with fine sandpaper to remove the wear marks, re-lubed the bushings and slides and put everything back together. The rumble was gone.

The 2 center slides have the same type of bushing and I will also be looking at them. For now they have been cleaned and lubed.

 

[PapaUtah]

I have my 13 stripped of tupperware. I ordered the connectors for the spiders and I am going to construct a Brodie-like harness for mine. I am taking every spider back to the battery. No daisy chain like the factory for me. I am going to try using 10 awg wire for the main trunk and 14 awg for all of the individual connectors. Overkill perhaps, but I want it done once.

 

[Queensland Ken]

The Gen3's are have a different wiring harness.

Lost a few hairs trying to figure out what they have done, a bit of a wiring nightmare.

According to the wiring diagram the bike has "daisy chained" neutral circuits.

It also has active circuit connector blocks.

One day I might go through the connector blocks and treat with with the appropriate treatment, silicon grease on multi-circuit connectors, carbon grease on same circuit connectors.

 

[PapaUtah]

Learn something new everyday...I will have to dig deeper into mine and see how the thing is setup. I assumed(I know, foolish me) that they were just the Gen II system "patched". Looks like protecting the new connectors at a minimum...

 

[mcatrophy]

The Gen3's are have a different wiring harness.Lost a few hairs trying to figure out what they have done, a bit of a wiring nightmare.

According to the wiring diagram the bike has "daisy chained" neutral circuits.

It also has active circuit connector blocks.

One day I might go through the connector blocks and treat with with the appropriate treatment, silicon grease on multi-circuit connectors, carbon grease on same circuit connectors.

I showed a few more in this post.

 

[Constant Mesh]

This connector failure is an absurd problem. Good thing Yamaha doesn't build high volume products. If they built a car with these wiring problems they'd be run out of the business by the government and the media.

To have to go in and maintain these connectors as many of you are doing would be deemed intolerable by most customers.

Yamaha should be paying a big price for this problem. They must have some unbelievably tolerant customers.

 

[Intech]

I would think that a daisy chained ground wiring would be much worse than ground cluster wiring. In a daisy chain you can have a single point of failure and lose everything in the chain.

 

[rbentnail]

I would think that a daisy chained ground wiring would be much worse than ground cluster wiring. In a daisy chain you can have a single point of failure and lose everything in the chain.

Keeping in mind of course that DownUnder "daisy chained" may mean something totally different from Virginian "daisy chained". Typically here in The States it means "each component wired in series" (which is NOT the case on any bike of any yr) but there are several other meanings, including hooking each item individually back to a central hub, like individual daisy petals to the flower center.