Useful mods...

[connor]

Hello Folks,

Bikes have always been in my family and there are a couple of mods which I've found to be useful regarding almost any type of bike.

1)  Fitting...what we used to call in England...a battery PIGTAIL.  There are occasions when you'll want to recharge your battery or may even suffer from a flat battery.  Removing the seat on the Magna is not the end of the world as jobs go but its a bit inconvenient when you just want access to the battery itself either to recharge it or to connect jump leads to its terminals.

What I do is to cut into the battery positive line close to the battery itself and by using a heavy duty terminal strip connector join a length of heavy duty cable to it. The cable should be the same thickness as the original positive cable. I then run the new cable to a convenient location..in the case of my Magna it runs between the frame and the rear mudguard and ends near the right pillion footrest.  I bare the end of the cable exposing about one inch of wire. You can't have that bare cable flapping about in the wind  cos it might short out to the bikes metal frame so I use a suitable length of rubber hose which snugly slides over the bared end of the wire. I then use a plastic tie clip which is loosely wrapped round the bike frame. The new wire with its protective rubber hose clips inside the tie wrap which holds it in place.
 
Now if you want to recharge your battery you can pull out the wire and remove the protective rubber hose.  Clip the battery charger positive clip to the wires bared end and the other battery charger negative clip to a suitable earth. Now you can charge the battery without the hassle of removing the seat.

If your battery is flat for some reason you can do exactly the same but in this case you are connecting jump leads and not battery charger leads. Again it does not involve seat removal.  For simply charging the battery you can use a thinner cable but if you want to attach jump leads at any time then you must use a heavier/thicker cable since the bikes starter motor will want to draw a large current to work efficiently.

2) My 2nd mod....Have never been impressed with the way electrical wires on motor bikes are all tightly bunched together. ie Stuffed into the headlight housing or crammed into some other nook or cranny.  Room is limited I know so its a necessity.

Have heard tails of bikes going up in flames caused by an electrical short so again I mess about with the battery positive wire and install a heavy duty isolating switch.  I cut into the positive and join two thick cables to the cut ends.  The new wires I run to a suitable location where the switch itself will be mounted.  In my case i've made up a decent sized rear carrying rack and I've mounted the switch to it. 

The switch I use has a removable key. Now when the switch is turned off and the key has been removed the only live wire on the bike is the positive battery lead to the switch.  My theory being that the less live wires running about the place then the less chance there is of a potential short circuit.  In a very simple way it doubles up as an anti theft device.

The switches are usually stocked by ships chandlers or maybe you'll find them in a car parts dept or an auto electricians. You cannot use an ordinary light switch for example... it must be a switch capable of carrying starter motor current loads.

If you don't fancy messing with the electrics on your bike then I should think any car or bike mechanic or auto electrician will do the work for you at a reasonable cost. About two hours labour would be about right I s'pose.

The foregoing I've found useful hopefully you will too..Regards to all..Connor 

[hootmon]

Connor;
  Any chance for some Pictures??? We like Pictures...!

[connor]

Hootmon....am relatively new to computors....Will work on picture posting.

( Perhaps I'll drag in the next 12 year old that passes by my house and get him/her to show me how its done...! )

[hootmon]

Go to a website like TinyPic.com and it's pretty easy to upload the pictures to there, and then they provide a link that you past in the test box of this site starting and ending in [img...img].. If you go into the profile section on the Picture website you can usually make the pictures private.