Disconnecting Battery to do Work!

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Boxer
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Disconnecting Battery to do Work!

Post by Boxer »

Rob,...Or anyone else who can tell me.
I want to disconnect the battery to do some wiring setup similar to yours from the low-beam power wire. I have the on-board computer and am worried about what I will have to "reset" when I lose power. Is this a major PITA, or just a matter of resetting the clock?

I also want to use the "Hyperlites" I took off the Roadster. Once I get the switched power source wired in can the Hyperlites just go straight to one of those switched power tabs? I'm about to dive into it tomorrow and I was reading that the tail light does not come apart to replace a bulb. The whole diode tail light unit has to be replaced...and the book of course says to have a dealer do it. I'll check the manual. Any info on this you can share would be nice.
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touchton
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Re: Disconnecting Battery to do Work!

Post by touchton »

Boxer wrote:Rob,...Or anyone else who can tell me.
I want to disconnect the battery to do some wiring setup similar to yours from the low-beam power wire. I have the on-board computer and am worried about what I will have to "reset" when I lose power. Is this a major PITA, or just a matter of resetting the clock?
It's just resetting the clock. You'll loose your two trip meter settings along with the data for average speed and mpg, but nothing important.
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Re: Disconnecting Battery to do Work!

Post by Boxer »

The master himself came to my rescue today! No, not Jesus.

Rob called me about 11 or so and said he wanted to go on a ride and asked if I'd be home. I said sure, I actually was working on the wiring stuff on the new bike and his help would be muchly appreciated.

He showed up about an hour later with his bag of electrical tricks and soldering iron! We played with the bike and took some parts off and wired up the power strip then after lots of soldering and fitting and wire cutting and screw screwing, we had this done.
Image

This was only the beginning! We (actually mostly Rob) got the driving lights wired, and the power strip tapped into the low beam power with the "diodes" in place and proper relays installed along the top side of the airbox. There was enough space under the plastic cover for it all to fit!

I now have 4 connectors for "B" (Battery), 4 connectors for "A" (Accessories), and 4 connectors for "G" (Grounds). The most ingenious and inexpensive part of this entire mod session was the use of metal T-50 staples as crossover connections under the power strip screws. Excellent!

Here's what I have now.

Image

My power strip is wired to the low beam with the power diode in line. My lights are wired. My GPS is wired. My heated vest is wired. My XM radio is wired. I'm WIRED!
The dealer installed an SAE plug up front straight to the battery for my Battery Tender since the Acc. outlet is switched power, so with the SAE plug. I can use it for my air pump when the need arises since I will seldom need the Battery Tender and the air pump to work at the same time...probably never.

After Rob left I got the light switch installed here.
Image

I had to shorten the wire and re-solder the connection then drill a hole in the panel right by my left knee. There is very little usable space on this bike, but we managed to find enough for what we needed. The fun part for me was being able to gain access to everything so easily. It was indeed fun watching Rob work! Thanks again Rob. I owe you a pizza for sure.
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Re: Disconnecting Battery to do Work!

Post by CycleRob »

We were hooking up power connections to battery and engine running sources that had to be created. I make a quickee list of each and the current draw (Low/Med/Hi ) of each.

Battery:
--Tire pump (Hi)
--Battery charger (Med)
--GPS (Low)

Engine running:
--Heated Vest (Hi)
--XM radio (Low)
--Hella Lites (Hi)

From there we chose wire gage and terminal screw location to supply the high current users the most direct path to the source. Those staple gun staples, 2 per connection, were overkill to carry the Low Amp connections to the adjacent screw terminal pairs.

Phil left out the part about the Hella relay not following the standard SPST (missing the 87a terminal) 4 terminal relay conventional terminal format, even though it used that exact same terminal pattern. The Hella relay mixes up the 30 & 86 terminal locations in the diagram!!
ImageImage

That little foreign manufacturer screw up wasted a good 20 minutes for the necessary undo/remap/redo. It's a good thing it was caught before the power got turned on. Fact is, if your Hella relay needs replacing, use individual wires to connect to the new one by terminal number, NOT the terminal location or the Hella plug that came with the lite set.

I had not seen this post until tonite, so calling Phil was totally out-of-the-blue, mainly to stop by on my ride and see the new bike. He said it was apart for his farkle add-ons wiring and was scratching his head for a location with enough room to accept everything. I had the same dilemma.

After doing this job myself in the course of 2+ afternoons, I knew he'd need some help. I thought we'd need a decent solder gun, wire stripper, terminal crimper pliers and dozens of electrical terminal choices (just in case) so I brought them. Surprisingly, he had the correct (rectifier) 1500ma blocking diodes, noted from my other posts. =D> Just ~4.5 hour later the new GS had all the main key components in place, all crimp connections soldered, confirmed correctly hooked up and ready for the rest of the peripheral easy stuff like the driving lites, ziptying wires and reinstalling the bodywork. It wasn't even power on tested when I left after 5pm. No need to. It was a neater job than my own because of additional, redundant, accurately placed heat shrink tubing. I had a neighborhood party to go to.

A relaxing, pleasant, easy ride home on the ~51 miles of the secondary roads between our houses. Vehicles going 40--55 MPH in front of me most of the round trip weren't too-too annoying as I listened to the flawless purr in 6th gear of that Rotax twin. I was watching with a smile the big numbers (70---90) reacting to the roadway in the instantaneous MPG readout. Going slow (all 6th gear) is not as upsetting as the same trip was on the GoldBoxer OilHead (in 5th gear). Because of those tame steady speeds, the MPG average for the tankful on the OBC display increased from 65 to 67 MPG for those 101 miles!

Pizza indeed! Placing my order . . . :-k . . . .
Large pepperoni and a big Pepsi . . . . plus whatever you're having. :badgrin:

.
Last edited by CycleRob on Sun Aug 23, 2009 1:36 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Disconnecting Battery to do Work!

Post by sweatmark »

Nice work, Boxer (and Rob).

Glad to see there's some room under that center panel. Haven't yet removed ours to ferret around, but will need to do similar work once the new caliper bolts for mounting Motolights arrive.

For our F800S we plan to install the AUX power relay (with a spare) and three gizmo circuits:

Motolights - 5A (35W x 2, but will try a set of MR16 narrow-beam LED bulbs @ 5W each)*
Gerbings plug - 10A
tankbag power - 5A**

The tank bag works off of another relay that's activated by magentic switch in mating tankbag mount.

So where would you folks install a 2nd accessory (Powerlet) socket? It would be great to have a direct-connected socket for battery maintenance via the BMW gel battery charger we were using for Mrs. Sweatmark's Roadster.


*similar to http://www.theledlight.com/12volt-led-bulb.html

**like this http://www.twistedthrottle.com/trade/pr ... /3098/318/
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Re: Disconnecting Battery to do Work!

Post by bobw »

Rob

Nicely done! =D> Thank you both for sharing this modification.

Safe travels!
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Re: Disconnecting Battery to do Work!

Post by Boxer »

Sweatmark: For battery maintenance/charging, as a customer service the dealer installed a SAE plug up front straight to the battery. It has a rubber cover on it and when I need to put the Tender on it, I just plug it into that SAE connection. It would be nice to have another "cigarette lighter" type outlet, but I don't really anticipate needing one at this time.
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Re: Disconnecting Battery to do Work!

Post by Boxer »

I stopped off at the Ace Hardware on the way home to pick up some clear Silicone sealant to fill that cavity in the top of the air box. Heaven only knows why that recess is there (it has an odd shape so it was probably meant for something to do with ABS I suppose). I filled the hole and smoothed it out with a little convex shape so the water would just run off when it heads down that way. I really didn't like the idea of water going in there and just setting there in a puddle on top of the air box. Problem solved.

Then I finished installing the Hyperlites in the rear. This set of Hyperlites were the ones I had on my 2003 R1150R and I wrote Hyperlite Co. to see if they would work with the CANBUS system. The email I got back said that they changed wiring of the set in 2004 and if I had the "old" set it would work okay. So I proceeded to solder the blue and brown wires to connect the module to the lights then sealed the connection with heat shrink.
Image

After that I pulled the bikes taillight connector from its mount and worked that rugged BMW electrical tape down off the wires to find a red power wire and a gray w/black line ground wire. Just like the old bike! I soldered the black module power wire to the red one and the gray one to the gray ground. It worked like a charm. The draw is so miniscule the CANBUS doesn't even detect it.
Image
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Re: Disconnecting Battery to do Work!

Post by Boxer »

Hey Rob! I finally got my new 35 watt ion bulbs in the mail and put them in the Hella housings and hooked them up. The lights burn as hoped when the engine starts, but the little switch does not turn them off! Could I not have a good enough ground connection or do you suppose it needs that power for the lit switch hooked up for the switch to function? What's your guess?
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Re: Disconnecting Battery to do Work!

Post by CycleRob »

Something certainly isn't right. I'd start at the green switch first. Use your Ohmmeter or continuity tester to make sure the 2 switch terminals the green wires connect to actually go open/closed when the rocker is flipped. Then check that the lite green wire from the switch connects to the relay coil terminal. Next would be the relay's other terminals.

I have a trip planned to Blue Moon or Atlanta BMW soon for a TDC locking pin, so I can swing by and put this to rest . . . or you could stop by my place. It's something simple and fixable.

.
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Re: Disconnecting Battery to do Work!

Post by Boxer »

I pulled out those wiring instructions that came with the light kit, and the switch has 3 spade connectors, one is ground, one goes to the relay, and one goes to the power coming off a headlight wire. I only have two wires connected to the switch. One is the ground and the other I can't remember where we connected it. But there is no third wire and I recall dismissing that third wire because we didn't need the switch lit up.

I'll go back and see if I can determine where that one connecting wire goes to while I'm checking the switch continuity. I'm assuming its on the relay...but I'll check it this afternoon. The lights work fine. I had to pull over this morning in the dark to re-aim them downward a little, but that was no problem. My headlight is also a little off so some fine tuning on the beam direction is needed.
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Re: Disconnecting Battery to do Work!

Post by CycleRob »

As mentioned in the "It Has Arrived!!!" post, the problem was corrected when he dropped by my house. It was in the side mounted rocker switch's terminal hook-up and marginal grounding of it's wire terminal to it's partially painted frame lug. When I left days before to not be late for my neighbor's party, connecting the switch was grouped in with the "peripheral easy stuff" I had left undone for Phil. He has successfully completed more complex tasks than that before, so I had little doubt it would be finished correctly. :-"

Sometimes it's the easy stuff that will trip you up, while clouding the integrity of the entire system. #-o The switch's 3 terminals are line, load and light. The descriptive little sticker was scrunched up and unreadable, so I took it over to the homemade battery charger and put a 2+ amp load on each terminal pair to ID what they do. It was easy to find the light terminal . . . the green light lit up! The other 2 swung the charger's ammeter to full scale with the switch flipped ON. Filing/sanding off the paint and connecting the terminals correctly got the driving lites working the way they're supposed to, only on/off by rocker switch with the engine running. :smt023 :smt045

Sweet.

He needed to ride his bike anyway.

.
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Re: Disconnecting Battery to do Work!

Post by jb44 »

Boxer wrote:I... I had to pull over this morning in the dark to re-aim them downward a little, but that was no problem. My headlight is also a little off so some fine tuning on the beam direction is needed.
Be sure to check the mounting bolts on the headlight when you do the adjustment.

http://f800riders.org/forum/showthread.php?t=30276

jb
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Re: Disconnecting Battery to do Work!

Post by euhero987 »

OHHHH my iffing GOD. I was searching for this in ages....... By the way.. how did it go? Want to change my headlight to a LED light... anyone have experience on this one? I would really appreciate the help
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Re: Disconnecting Battery to do Work!

Post by CycleRob »

"Want to change my headlight to a LED light..."

euhero987,
LED lights are not powerful enough to replace your bike's headlight. They are bright enough to seem powerful when you look directly at them, but in actual use they do not seem to illuminate the road ahead for much of a useable distance, or most importantly, over an area more than just straight ahead. Maybe you mean HID lamps?

There are (high priced) LED "driving lights" that draw very little electrical power, but they too are not good at illuminating the road ahead and the seller's descriptive literature even says so. They are good mostly for being "noticed" or "seen" by on coming traffic. It may be the wave length of the light beam that causes the visibly dim illumination shortcoming that our eyes do not see very well.
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