STS Smart Turn System - installation

[John d]

Tim,

I see you mounted your steel angle rotated up and pointed back. I mounted my steel angle rotated down and pointing forward. Did you have to cut away some of the plastic at the mount to get the steel angle to fit like that? It really doesn't matter as long as the STS box fits into the fairing space and is properly oriented to the ground plane and facing forward, your STS orientation is correct.

I like your plug and play harness. It looks much cleaner. You whole bike looks much cleaner.

As far as activating for lane changes most of us have forgotten the check-signal-check rule. If the rule is followed, then there is at least one second before making the lane change with the signal on. Too many people signal their almost completion of a lane change, rather then their intent of a lane change. Still, more abrupt lane changes cancel better than slow smooth lane changes.

I'm really enjoying not having to worry about signal cancellation anymore!

 

[DesignFlaw06]

I see you mounted your steel angle rotated up and pointed back. I mounted my steel angle rotated down and pointing forward. Did you have to cut away some of the plastic at the mount to get the steel angle to fit like that? It really doesn't matter as long as the STS box fits into the fairing space and is properly oriented to the ground plane and facing forward, your STS orientation is correct.

I think I cut my angle bracket a little more than yours. You drilled a new hole where I just cut the bracket closer to the first hole. I also used a countersunk bolt so that surface was flat. But to get it into that position, I had to loosen it to get it to rotate and then tighten it. Looking at your picture originally, I didn't grasp what you had done. But now that I've had my head in there, I see it.

I like your plug and play harness. It looks much cleaner. You whole bike looks much cleaner.

Thank you. It was very convenient that all of the connections were in that connector. Even with the time spent making the harness, I think it saved much more time on the install. But I never would have gotten there without your initial write-up.

As far as activating for lane changes most of us have forgotten the check-signal-check rule. If the rule is followed, then there is at least one second before making the lane change with the signal on. Too many people signal their almost completion of a lane change, rather then their intent of a lane change. Still, more abrupt lane changes cancel better than slow smooth lane changes.

I took it out again and had very little success even after waiting 1 second. Maybe I'm just too smooth? I'm sure I'll figure out more as time goes on. But this is a nice little feature to have.

I like your plug and play harness. It looks much cleaner. You whole bike looks much cleaner.

Thank you. It was very convenient that all of the connections were in that connector.

 

[John d]

It's natural to do smooth lanes changes, so don't count on the signals self cancelling.

 

[RiderJoe]

So I'll tack on my install to what John did and some of the things I observed. It gave me something to do during Tech Day. First of all, a big thanks to John for his initial write-up. This would have been much more challenging without it.

I ordered the 13 Position 090 MT Connector from Eastern Beaver.
https://www.easternbeaver.com/13p090-mt_2025.jpg

I highly recommend making the harness up ahead of time. It saves so much effort and really isn't that difficult to do. Plus those vampire clips are a pain to work with sometimes and I have had them fail.

As I don't own the official crimpers, I soldered the wires to the pins and then I used needle nose pliers to crimp the pins. I usually do this even when I have the right crimpers, but anyway, that makes it solid enough.
https://i.imgur.com/CGm5PzUl.jpg

For power and ground, I just put both wires into the pins. It made for a cleaner look and I was happy with it.
https://i.imgur.com/IatcYIpl.jpg

Finished product. Power & ground are really the only ones I used different wire colors. Anything not related to the turn signals just got white.
https://i.imgur.com/zEEvr5rl.jpg

Installed. We only had to remove the lower left fairing to get access to the connectors. The left handlebar control has the male connector on the end of it. The main harness is the female. Obviously you need to do the reverse for this harness.
https://i.imgur.com/1dOUC9Wl.jpg

The mounting location John showed I didn't think was real clear, but I think I found it. My thought from his picture was that the module needed to be vertical but from STS videos, it needs to be horizontal. I bought the same bracket John did, but I found I could just cut it off and use the 1st hole without drilling a new one. The mounting location is where the headlight assembly attaches to the fairing. This picture is looking up and the bracket is going up first then left. The STS module was mounted with the arrow facing forward down the road. The label side got the other side of the velcro and then we zip tied it from there.
https://i.imgur.com/0jhJg23l.jpg

Everything worked right out of the gate. I also found the pressure required to operate the turn signals with the foam pieces to be too much. I drilled a hole like John suggested and that helped. I'm sure it'll get easier over time as well.

I can say it works pretty well right out of the gate. I drove it about 350 miles, but most of that was slab. Here's what I noticed.

• I only tried to push the cancel button a couple times at the start of the first ride.
  
• The turn signal blink rate seems to be less consistent, but that may be because I'm paying too much attention to it.
  
• I didn't have much luck with lane changes but I didn't expect to. I hadn't caught John's tip about signaling 1 second before the maneuver. I'll have to try that.
  
• It didn't take me long to get used to canceling with the same direction and I had plenty of lane changes to practice on.
  
• While at speed, it appears it will cancel after 20 seconds.
  
• It is a little sensitive to turns where the road curves before the intersection opposite of the way you're turning. BikerGeek's road had such an intersection, but no big deal. There's a Michigan Left by my house that it may have an issue with, but I've only gone around it once.
  

All in all, I'm happy with it. For me, considering it a safety device is a bit of a stretch. Let's be honest, we're solving a first world problem here. There are some that this will benefit more than others. And the big perk of my install is that now the only thing my dad's Goldwing has that mine doesn't is reverse. I don't see that coming so I'll have to settle with the fact that mine is faster.

I'll try to make a GoPro video of it next week to show how well it works.

Thanks for the detailed post of your STS installation. I just installed one on my (new to me) 2006 FJR, pretty much following your steps. I ended up purchasing a crimper tool after doing some research on the pros and cons of soldering. That tool worked awesome. It made attaching the wires to the terminals very easy, precise, strong, neat, and very quick. As you said, the setup worked right away after snapping the harness between the existing plug ends. Thanks again!