[LowLife1220]

i pulled off my tank and headlight and started shedding some wire weight last night. i want to hide the wiring that has to run to the cdi and relays in the backbone but i'm nervous as hell about it. i was going to drill a hole in the underside at the top of the spine and another at the bottom. cut the wiring at the bottom. run it down the spine with a fishtape and then reconnect it but theres alot of wires, two connectors for the coils and i don't wanna screw it up. any advice?

 

[Reg in Bristol]

Its quite doable if good practise is observed.

I thought about that a lot when building the mongrel but ended

up wiring on the fly to my own specs externally in the end as I used more cable than I needed

for future projects.

I might still do it though



It looks like a CDI bike right? not that it matters really

I've stripped a few CX looms and found

much of the thickness of the CX harness is due to commoning of the

ground ( green) and live ( black) cables.

this can be dispensed with if you devise suitable alternatives and will cut down the

overall diameter and so the size of the hole needed



Lets say you drill a hole near the headstock for the harness

and start feeding rearward

I was goin to drill underneath at about the position of the tank lugs

you'll need an exit for the oil pressure and temp gauge wires midway

just above and forward of the carbs

so a 6/8mm hole ( with grommet) should do for that

the neutral wire can run all the way back.



I figured a 20mm max hole on the outer bend just above the airbox wouldnt compromise the strength

much and I could have run cables to the rear in the tubes as well if I had wanted to.

the airbox area is where the CDI, stator, brake lights etc meet the harness so connections

need to be done externally in that area.



You'll need to be prepared to hack the harness up, lay in good fresh cable, rejig connectors

and have a jolly good idea what your doing before you start.

"plan the work and work the plan" as they say

Sketching it out however roughly, would help it may get messy otherwise.

I have no wiring diagram for my bike but tend to memorise things like that

and use the Honda colour conventions anyway so its pretty simple to figure out

I added a TI ignition harness to a basic CDI harness with some 'extras'

It all works reliably but I do keep seeing things I'd like to alter and could simplify

if I hadnt added so much redundancy

Ho hum.

I also dispensed with the ground point on the battery tray which is common rot point

and welded a threaded boss on the inner part of the frame near hwere the CDI used to be

and have a few earth cables commoned there.

My flasher units in this area as well.



the most busy part of the harness is up front.

Its not so easy to simplify here unless you start dumping things like indicators

so for me its a necessary evil.

 

[Reg in Bristol]

Just remembered I made a pin board of s CX harness and mapped all the

connections in case I ever wanted to make a new one

The section running rearward of the main branching point to the switches could be made thinner if a workaround to the internal commoning was devised.