I have done a lot of electrical work on cars but this is my first time connecting up anything for a motorbike.
Dean has been building a custom motorcycle, pretty much from scratch. The frame and engine were once from different Yamaha's and Dean has adjusted the frame to his taste and assembled it with all the components to make a bike of his design.
He wanted the wires to be tidy so I've made up a complete harness.
I've started with the circuit diagram from a similar era Yamaha, which I had to understand and in the process correct. The engine is a 1985 to 1989 Yamaha XT600 which is similar to the XT550 of the same era.
From that circuit I created my own diagrams, specific to Dean's bike and then added a harness layout for them. Once that was all worked out and I was happy with it...
I proceeded to make up the harness. I've used braided casing, cloth wrap and heat shrink tubing for a tidy job.
It only took a couple of days, on and off, then we were able to fit it to the bike and test it.
It did not go to plan and a bit of investigation was needed. The ignition switch was faulty, so with that bypassed, the harness worked as intended. There was also a slight fault on the connector to the tail light which had a bent pin, easily fixed.
The run for the top tube is a little longer than it needs to be but the whole thing is discretely fitted to the frame.
As a bonus, Dean has a near complete electrical manual for his custom motorcycle.
Download:
Updated July 2023 (revised cable run lengths and test details for some of the components.)
Dean's motorcycle electrical manual (PDF)
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