Softail Bagger
Harley Motorcycle ProjectsDiscuss Softail Bagger in the Motorcycles forums; I am getting ready to wire up the dash. There will be two separate wire harnesses, the ignition and the dash lights.
But first we need to mount the dash ...
I am getting ready to wire up the dash. There will be two separate wire harnesses, the ignition and the dash lights.
But first we need to mount the dash lights.
There are several ways to mount LEDs, let me show you a few.
Here is the rear fender that I made before I started posting this thread.
If you have been following this thread you know I have tubes mounted in the rear fender just the same as the dash. The fender also has a blacked out taillight/brake in the middle.
To do this I bought a 56 Packard tail light lens, I have always liked the shape and thought it would be neat to French in the lens. Well when I got it I found it was way too big.
I kept trimming the lens, and ended up with a piece about two inches wide and six inches long that looked like a cats eye.
I then made a piece of metal that fit in the curve of the fender, cut out the cats eye and welded it into the fender.
You can see I welded some bolts inside the fender to hold the lens in.
Here is what the fender looked like.
These bolts also hold in a circuit board that I made with the LEDs mounted onto it.
You can get this perforated board material from R Shack.
You can see it has resistors also on the board.
I ran five LEDs in series with a resistor. At that time I did not realize if I put six of them in a series I would not need a resistor.
Daah.
The center row has twenty five LEDs in sets of five in series, the sets are then wired up in parallel.
The side rows are the same with fifteen, ten. You can run as many sets in parallel as you need.
If you were going to run sets without resistor, you need to do your math.
LEDs will burn within a range of voltage.
They will tell you what it is. Usually 1.7-2.1 (or something like that.) If you want them dim you divide 1.7 into 12.6 and you get 7.5 or seven, your number to run in series..
If you want them bright you devide 2.1 into 12.6 or 6.
My board is wired so that you can use any combination of the LEDs on the board. There are two post that hook up the lights..
You just unhook the wires and move them to the other post if you want to.
And then you run your wire from the bike to the post.
I have it wired so that the middle row is running, and the other four come on with the brake.
But I have been tempted to change it with more running.
The green is the ground.
After I made the board I sealed in the LEDs with epoxy, then mounted them inside the fender under the lens.
On the outside of the lens I also sealed it in with clear epoxy.
I made a mistake on the epoxy that I used, I used the stuff that you buy from Home depot, problem is you can not sand it. It turns to milk.
You are supposed to use amine free epoxy. I am not going to go into this, do a search for sanding epoxy, it will give more details than I can.
Here is what the fender looked like after mounting the lens and epoxying over it looked like.
You can see the paint is pretty messed up.
Then I taped off the lens, touched up the paint on the fender, then I put a real thin coat of black mixed with clear over the lens. Just enough to make it look black when the light is off but not enough to keep the light from showing through.
Then I cleared over everything, and color sanded everything.
Another way to mount the LEDS would be to mount the board inside the fender without a lens and then just filling it with epoxy, and sanding it smooth.
Never done this but it is a common way to do it.
Then just blacking it out if you want to.
Just make sure you use red LEDs or put some color in your epoxy.
For anyone interested here is what the fender looked like first fitting, before it was trimmed.
More to come latter.
My wife is out of town and took the camera, and I do not have the cord for the video camera, so until she gets back there are no photos.
I did make a lot of progress yesterday, I was able to make some mounts for the dash to the tank and make a bracket for the hidden switch.
Also was able to get the ignition acc wiring done.
I showed you the planed out wire diagram before.
Today I am working on the dash lights, and I want to talk about how to do that.
Everyone should be able to read a schematic. Especially if you are working on your bike.
It is much easer that it looks and I am going to give you a brief break down of the dash light.
Here is what the factory schematic looks like.
To figure it out you would need the other schematics that this wire harness hooks up to.
You take a color marking felt pen and run the line back to the source.
There are basic wiring abbreviations, but I am not going to get into that much.
If you look at the schematic you see the left indicator, above that two lines. There is a circle with a v and circle with a b that means violet colored wire, and black colored wire. If you follow the wire it also gives the color of the wire up by the connection plug. The connection plug is the box with all the numbers in it.
You need this information to be able to tell what wire goes to where and how the connection plug is wired.
21a and 21b is the connector number so that you can look it up to find its location.
Next down by the switch it has a circle with LT, that tells where the wire goes to, left turn, next to it is a circle with a – that means it goes to a ground.
If you notice the neutral light wires it says TN, that means tan and N that means neutral switch, and it is a + so that means it is a hot wire and O that means orange.
On the oil it says OP, that means it goes to the oil pressure sending unit. and GN/Y that means grean with a yellow stipe. And the other wire is + so it is hot.
Let me explain how the oil and neutral light work.
The wire coming in to the light is hot with the key on, it goes through the light and then to the oil or neutral sending unit.
The oil/neutral sending units work as a off on switch that goes to ground.
If there is no pressure or if the trans is in neutral the switch works as a ground and the light comes on.
When there is oil pressure or the trans is in gear it is not a ground so the light goes off.
Let me draw a schematic that is a little simpler.
When ever you make a new wire harness you need to make sure you plan out your wiring so that you can keep the plan in front of you.
It is like a road map, plan where you are going to put your resistors your grounds, plan on where you are going to put your connection plugs.
You would be surprised how easy it is to forget something if you don’t.
More when the camera gets back.
Got it, done, works perfect. Still looks way to heavy on the stock tank but am going to run it this week. Don’t know if I will use it going to Maxton. Maybe throw some flat black on it, with the unpainted front fender looks pretty rough.
Haven’t decided.
Need to get started on the tank, get the bike repainted this winter.
The paint on the rear fender, bags looks pretty bad, worst they ever have.
Need to get a new touch up gun, maybe for Christmas.
Now I need to get the Living room cleaned up, been wiring on the coffee table. Mrs Cruiser will be home tomorrow, and if I don't get this mess cleaned up, I will be sleeping downstairs with the bike.
Well I took a bunch of still pictures of the wiring, with my video camera, but the quality is so poor, I will not post them.
Was going to give a wire by wire description but without photos, never mind.
Here is what the wiring looks like done.
Here are the LEDs look like, the black thing is a holder to keep the wires from touching the sided of the tube.
I then wrapped the LEDs with electrical tape to make them fit the tubes and then epoxied the LEDs into the tubes.
On the LEDs the long wire is the positive the short is ground.
Also a LED is a light emitting diode. A diode let electricity through only one way so if it is wired up wrong, it wont work.
With these LEDs you also need a 470 resistor.
You can place the resistor before or after the LED, I put them before then shrink wrapped them.
Resistors are cheap, the place that I get mine throws them in for free.
The two relays are epoxied to the dash.
Rode all the way up to Maxton with it, 1100 miles plus, everything works great. Had a problem yesterday coming home from work, started back firing out the back.
The ignition was cutting on and off.
Thought it was the battery cable but when I finally got home took the dash off and the connector that used to go to ignition switch was real hot. Looks like the contacts need to be bent out just a little to make better contact with the new spade wire connectors that plugs into it, and go to the ignition/acc relays.
Anyway pulled the dash off the bike and going to run the stock dash for a while until I start on the tank.
Anyway there are a few things that I did not like, the push button main switch does not work quite right, sometimes it is hard to push in, I need to get a better quality, or go with a different style.
I would like to find one like the odometer reset button, but know this is momentary on, not on off.
The LEDs are not bright enough, so need to put in some ultra-brights.
Still hard to get used to not having that big switch in the middle of the dash.
Didn’t think I would miss it, but it still feels funny.
There is no way that I can use the switch if I plan on welding the dash to the tank, there will not be enough room underneath and no excess.
I might just use a key switch and put it someplace else, like on the side of the bike.
Anyway this is why I like to run something before I commit to it, just working out the bugs.
Think I will pull off my front fender and get it painted, let the dash and tank simmer in my mind.
After the LEDs were in and the wiring was done I epoxied over the bare wires to help protect them.
I did this the same time that I epoxied the relays to the top of the dash.
I wrapped the blue wires around the post to keep the wires long so that when I change the wiring I will have plenty of wire to work with, also helps from pulling everything out, when you mess with the harness.
When I finally get the tank done I will sand blast the bottom of the dash before welding it on. Also most of the stuff will be relocated and the wiring will be moved so that it won’t be under the dash, but will be in a hollow part in the front of the gas tank, under the speedometer.
Well I am starting a new project, a front fairing. It will be fixed like the Road Glide but will be shaped much different.
I have looked at a ton of different bikes, and keep coming back to the same one, Ness Smoothness.
While it will look different on my bike, this is the inspiration.
This bike does not have a windshield, mine will.
This is what I think it will look like with a windshield. Excuse my photo it has been worked on so that it is not so dark.
I went up to Lowes and picked up a sheet of 4x8x2 Styrofoam and will cut it up in pieces and laminate the pieces to get the width that I want.
I had played around with different ideas thinking I wanted the headlight in the cowl to move as the bike turned, but feel that is too hard to do. Maybe in the future.
I am going to have it fit over my headlight, trying to make it so that if I want to take it off the cowling my original headlight will be underneath.
Anyway just wanted to get some of this down on paper before I started, I am curious as to see how this turns out.
I have no idea what it will look like.
I have started forming up the plug for the cowling/faring. I started with a sheet of 4x8x2 inch piece of Styrofoam and have cut it up into small pieces.
I took off half of my headlight frame and used it to make the cut out on the pattern.
After the first piece was cut I used it as a pattern for the next, and so on. Each piece is cut so that it fits over the headlight and handle bars.
I did this so that I can take the plug off and on easily to work on every day and still ride the bike.
It just pops off.
The plug is the piece of Styrofoam that I am going to fiberglass over, to get the final fiberglass cowl. The plug turns with the light now but after It is done it will be fixed so that it does not turn. And the stryafoam will be taken out of the inside of the fiberglass cowl.
The plug is still rough and needs to be trimmed, but it is better to make it big and trim to shape than to have to add latter.
Here is the first piece.
When you get several pieces I glued them together with spray contact cement, 3M 77.
Don’t put it on too heavy or it will melt the Styrofoam.
I am shaping the plug as I go, cutting off excess and trimming to shape.
Once I get all the pieces together I will do the final shaping.
This is the same way that I made the plugs for the saddlebags.
You can see the piece of 4x8 foam in the background.
Each piece is different so that it fits the headlight snug so that it can be taken off and on and still be in the same place every time.
More latter.
Well got more done this afternoon, I think I might add one more layer, it is about three inches off my tank and I would like it four so will glue up another tomorrow morning.
Then it is ready to start shaping.
I have a old headlight housing, I wanted to use the teardrop, style but don’t think it would look right.
Here is what it looks like tonight.
It is about as streamline as a brick, but wanted to show how bad something can look before it is shaped.
Well I got a lot of shaping done on the plug today.
Shaping Styrofoam is done with anything you can get your hands on. It cuts easily files easy, and even sands.
It is fragile so you need to be careful not to break it.
I use a big file/rasp used for trimming horse hoofs a lot.
You want to get it down rough because it has a tendency to break off the cells, or popcorn. And then you and take it down the last layer by filing sanding.
Here I am cutting it with a hand saw.
Here is what it looks like now. It is still too heavy in the front, not sure if it is too long or just because it need to be smaller.
The tail is not as long as the style needs to be in order to flow, but any longer and it hits my knee, and if I make it wider to let my knee inside the faring, it looks too fat.
I am working on ideas about the headlight, and do not want to take any more foam away from the plug until I decide what it needs.
Sometimes it is better to let something sit, think about it, than to ruin everything by hacking on it.
The black circle is the size of the rim that will go outside of the headlight, so I can still trim it some, on top and bottom, sides, and there is still two inches of foam on the top and bottome that can be thinned down.
I am going to print out the last photo and draw what I think it should look like with the windshield.
I need to pull the plug off, pop my windshield on because I need to ride it to work tomorrow.
Also need to blow out the barn, my wife is out of town and the floor is covered with a quarter inch of popcorn.
So I need to clean up and let this sit, or I will be sleeping in the barn after she comes home.
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