Jonny's Senior Project!

As most of you know I am about done with this silly school nonsense and I am working on a senior project. I would like to build an electric motorcycle and to do so I need some help. I am in serious need of some sponsors. If you are interested, just leave a comment or get a hold of me. All donations big or small are greatly appreciated and are 100% tax deductible!

Insperation



Monday, October 19, 2009

It’s been a little while since I have posted and I have a little to get caught up on .

I decided to dive into the existing wiring of the motorcycle it ended up being quite a pain. I spent quite a long time on it tracing wires all over the place trying to get rid of what I no longer needed to help lose some weight and clean up some of the mess of the tangled wires all over the place. I was not able to get rid of as much as I had hoped must of the wire was just going to the fuse box which is at the tail end of the bike and back to the lights.



After quite some time of working on it and tearing my hair out trying to figure out what the crap the previous owner was thinking while trying to rewire things himself I finally stumbled across a repair manual for the GSX-R. I went through and traced over everything that I thought I would need or want in color so that I could see it. Once I had this things went soooooo much easier, I had tried to find a wiring layout earlier but was unable to I should have just searched a little harder and saved myself some time and headache.

I got all of the lights to work, I think the reason the blinkers are not flashing is because I just don’t have enough load on the line without having the front turn signals attached. Once the new ones arrive it should be fine if not NAPA sells a relay for a couple bucks that will work with any system so I’ll try that if they do not flash with the front and the back hooked up.


I got my low beams and my high beams to work, they are not very bright because I kind of jerry-rigged a 12 V systems out of a trickle charger so I could test to make sure it all worked.


I may have an issue with the tail lights though the brake light is constantly on, I checked the foot switch and the hand switch with a volt meter and they both only put out 12 V when the switch was pressed. I will have to play with that more later I was just excited that I was able to get all of the lights to even come on at all.

I got an email from Bryan at EV Source saying that he had all the cabling that I ordered. He was nice enough to let me come and use his tools, so I loaded up the bike and headed over to his shop to get to work. He has a great hydraulic crimper which made the process quick and easy. If you are interested he does have a rental policy on all his tools where when you send the tools back to him he will give you your money back for the tools.

These are actually just some garden shears but they work great for cutting cable.

I decided to go with 2 AWG wire for everything it is a little heavier but I should not have any issues with overheating and getting that melting smell that people talk about from using the wrong gauge of wire. These little wire strippers worked out pretty slick too, there is just a dial at the end to adjust the height of the blade and then you just turn it around the cable a couple times to strip the ends off.


Last important tool is the heat gun for the shrink wrap to go over the ends of the terminal connectors.

Crimping the ends.

Heatshrink.

The finished project!! There are still a couple of cables I need to make but I did not have my relay switch mounted yet so I did not know the lengths that I needed yet so I’ll have to come back and finish that up.

My buddy Adam came up on Saturday to help me with the bodywork, he has experience working with fiberglass so he came to fix some of it for me.

There was a crack and some small holes in the side fairings so he patched all of those up and then the piece that holds the side fairings together in the middle was actually in 3 pieces and he was able to get it all back together so it was is as good as new! I still need to go over and sand them down once it sets up and repaint it but at least it is fixed now.




The result of putting the 3 pieces together.

I decided to get rid of the tachometer and the temp sensor and modify the cluster so that it will hold the Switch relay and the display.

I have not attached the display yet I just cut the hole for it is all but I’ll need to seal it up with some silicon or something to prevent the moisture from getting in.


1 comment:

ZoomSmith said...

Jonny,
Your pics on this entry don't expand when you click on them. I was hoping to see more detail of your factory wiring diagram. Where did you get it?