Harness update

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challey
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Harness update

Post by challey »

This afternoon, I was finally able to get the fried harness off the bike, which I guess means that I'm about 50% complete. It is a big job, not hard but very tedious and time comsuming. There are a lot of components that you need to remove, the biggest PITA is the air box, which requires that you unbolt everything from the rear sub-frame so that you can swing it up and out of the way.

I will post some more pictures of the actual work involved but after getting a closer look at the fried harness, I wanted to again get the warning out there to all pre-Canbus owners: Checy your harness thoroughly!. It appears the our harnesses are prone to wear at 2 points; 1) the loop under the tank and 2) at the bend near the rear of the battery tray. My harness was worn at both of these points and could easily have failed and stranded me. My earlier posts show the harness failure in the area under the tank. The picture below shows at least an incipient failure at the bend near the corner of the battery tray (this was the area that toolingalong had short out. I was lucky in that my bike died in my driveway. Toolingalong had his fry and got stranded something like a thousand miles from home.

Bottom line is: Prevent this from happening to you, check your harness thoroughly.

You can see that the insulation on the primary wire (postive lead) to the battery is worn through. There is another wire who's insulation also worn through. This was a disaster waiting to happen.
Image

Charlie
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boxermania
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Re: Harness update

Post by boxermania »

Charlie

After everything is said and done and after looking at the wire harness you are a very lucky guy.......yes it failed, at home and you and the bike are reasonably healthy. Best of luck.
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Daryl.Stamp
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Re: Harness update

Post by Daryl.Stamp »

That's a lot of work Challey; hope it's back together again soon.
How soon do you think it will be back on the road?


DLS
challey
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Re: Harness update

Post by challey »

Darryl asked:
How soon do you think it will be back on the road?
Will be at least a couple more weeks. I'm taking my time and since I now have access to much of the innards of the bike, I'm taking the opportunity to do some cleaning and a few modifications.

Since I've now got easy access to clutch slave cylinder, I will remove and clean that and will try to do the Cycle Rob modifcation to add a drain trough and hole to cylinder housing. I've also pulled off the starter, cleaned that and checked the input shaft splines. I'm installing a new headlight wire harness to replace the undersized stock wiring. This is an easy mod that you don't need a lot of access to do but the need did not become apparent to me until I saw the puny, unfused line that supplies the headlight when I removed the wire harness. I'm also thinking seriously about replacing the stock air box and filter with K&N's attached directly to the TB's. The jury's still out on that decision however: I wonder if doing that is inviting disaster when it rains.

It's not likely that I'll have the bike done in time to get to the Hungry Mother Ride (my initial target date). I may have another 2-wheeled alternative however - I've been looking at some used SV/DL650's and am getting close to pulling the trigger on one.

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omg1010
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Re: Harness update

Post by omg1010 »

Hi Charlie,

great, take your time and don't do all this in a rush. One advise from my side, don't remove the airbox and put K&N's to the TB's as this costs power and torque. Stick to the airbox and if you'd like to do your bike something good modify your airbox to let the bike "breathe" better. Get yourself a larger filter (sources tell me that the K & N E-3210 would be appropriate). Mark the inner dia of this new K&N on the bottom of your airbox (center!) and dremel away the little grid which you see on the bottom of your airbox (put some rag in there before you start!) and clean everything from the remaining plastic objects. See photo below. You could also drill some larg holes into the right side of your airbox and cover these with some mesh (fix well so the stuff does not get sucked in)

You'll feel the difference!

Image
Image

Apart of that some German fellow riders have gone the brutal way (see below)! Just room for thought ...

Image

Kind regards
Oliver
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Re: Harness update

Post by CycleRob »

"You could also drill some large holes into the right side of your airbox and cover these with some mesh (fix well so the stuff does not get sucked in)"

You show no dyno run curves of these modifications. I can tell you that the "feel" you describe comes about because the peak HP is increased a few HP in the top 1,500 RPM or so at the expense of significant losses below that. Airboxes do a lot more than just contain the air filter. There is a great deal of rocket science dynamics in those airboxes and drilling holes in the side walls or lid -always- results in HP losses and loud intake noise. A Honda VFR750, SV-650 Suzuki, 900SS Ducati and worst of all the 18 HP loss in a Buell Lightening all had these "holes" drilled in their airboxes with great expectations . . . . until our shop DynoJet dyno showed them otherwise with precise honesty. The poo stopped there. The silent pause and long faces were all too familiar. They were somewhat comforted by the reality that 2 layers of less rigid duct tape would recover most all of the power losses.

Even guys that build dedicated F800 racebikes continue to use the stock airbox and snorkel. Guess why.

.
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Re: Harness update

Post by omg1010 »

Hello cyclerob,

on my R1100R I have dremeled away the grid on the bottom of the airbox and installed a larger filter (without touching the airbox itself). That modification has had a healing effect on the dip in torque experienced between 3200 and 4000 rpm. I agree with you that other modifications (such as drilling holes in the airbox itself) lead to losses in mid-range and gains in top speed. The source for these mod's is the german boxer-speed forum where enthusiasts exchanged tuning tips. There are quite a few R1100 engines here in Germany with upto 115 HP and R1150 engines with upto 125 HP and last but not least R1200 enines (non HP2) with 130 and more HP.

Kind regards
Oliver
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iowabeakster
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Re: Harness update

Post by iowabeakster »

OMG,

I've seen some of your posts about your bike...and you did some other "serious" modifications to it. I can't remember exactly what...but I thought it was new pistons, cams, etc...in other words you have an entirely different motor. I think you are both on the same page here. But without "serious" mods, this stock engine is not going to be able to benefit from a modified intake, and will likely suffer from tuning issues. With everything in the crankcase stock, and no changes to the fuel distribution, the airbox is not a "limiting factor". The stock airbox is ideally tuned to the demands of the stock motor. If not ideally tuned...much better than a person could do without an R&D facility.

I, too, think it's funny the "minor" mods that some people do (i.e. intake and exhaust). Those mods have no chance of significantly increasing output. Power is basically a factor of how much fuel the motor can burn. If you haven't changed the motors ability to burn MORE FUEL (with the approprate air, within a given period of time)...you haven't increased your power. It can't be done with the "minor" mods that some people do.
Last edited by iowabeakster on Sun Aug 09, 2009 6:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Harness update

Post by Boxer »

Wouldn't some WD-40 on the brakes help make it faster? :-k
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Re: Harness update

Post by omg1010 »

@ iowabeakster
Obviously I cannot judge what impact a mod of the airfilter/airbox has on an an otherwise untouched engine as all comrads of mine have more or less modified their engines (or at least modified the airfilter/airbox in conjunction with a different exhaust). However bearing in mind that the fuel/air mix is all the time monitored by the motronic I would assume that if the engine is allowed to breathe better the motronic would automatically adjust the amount of fuel injected accordingly thus resulting in a better "filling" of the burning chambers ...

@ boxer
Have you already tried that? Would be interesting to see/hear about the result.

Best regards
Oliver
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Re: Harness update

Post by toolinalong »

Charlie's right. Here are some pics of mine in the shop at Holt's BMW in Athens, Ohio, where owner Kent Holt was kind enough to let me do a lot of the tear down and rebuild myself.
The pictures show very similar issues. Mine was a catastrophic failure in that I was riding along just fine one moment, and the next moment the engine had shut off and smoke was pouring out from underneath the tank.
Investigation showed the + and - cables had shorted at the point where they enter the harness behind the battery tray and with an unrestricted path, the battery's juice vaporized the wires.
And yes, my incident happened in West Virginia, about 15 miles east of the Ohio River on Highway 33 at the junction with Highway 87, in the middle of a 6 week trip.
The somewhat disturbing thing to me was that along with the big failure, once I tore into it to remove the old harness there was evidence of several places where other wires had insulation missing or melted that, given that all the fuses blew out, raises the question in my mind of how much of that is the result of the major short circuit and how much predated that event.

Finally, just as an FYI, I just finally got the bike back to 100% 2 days ago (the incident took place on June 15). After replacing the harness in Ohio (which took 2 weeks cause the new harness had to come from Germany) the bike ran, but not well. I managed to limp down to Nashville to a friends house first, then after putzing with it in his garage for an afternoon, decided to limp home on the Interstate, and did it in 2 days and 1250 miles of "will I make it?" riding. Once home further investigation found more problems, including and finally having to replace the ECU. Total cost of this incident to me was just a tad over $5,000, not counting motels etc., of which $1100 or so was replacing throttle bodies which was needed regardless.

So yea, check that wiring guys, every time you have her opened up. At the Denver dealer where I had the last bit of work done on her, the service managers were keen to hear my story. One of them then related a story about having to replace the harness as the result of a heated grip shorting out. When I pressed her as to why something so simple and on a fused circuit could cause such damage, she had no idea.


Bob

<img src="http://i299.photobucket.com/albums/mm29 ... Wiring.jpg">
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Re: Harness update

Post by toolinalong »

sorry guys, it's been awhile since I last posted pictures, try this instead:

http://s299.photobucket.com/albums/mm29 ... =slideshow
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