There are some check marks on my list! I wouldn’t say a majority, but I’m making progress.

The list, however, looks like a contradiction of the bike. It’s a seriously depressing sight to barely be able to recognize a bike and even suckier to not be able to ride. Who in their right mind tears apart a $14K vehicle you have nearly 3 years of payments still left on to cut wires and totally tweak things?

…I guess I do.

The problem has been that in order to stuff my various HID lights that put three times the lumens out with about 70% of the draw of halogen……I have an electrical gremlin. When I hit the high beam switch the fuse to the low beams pops. I still haven’t figured it out, but I’m sure it’s probably related to a rat’s nest of wires where I tried to retain the original wiring harness and rig a switch up to allow multiple combinations of lights (brights when I hit the brights, brights and lows when I hit the brights, brights when I flip a switch regardless of whether I hit the brights, etc.)

I learned one important thing last season. If you’re riding along with your high beam HID lights only for 10 or more minutes and suddenly an oncoming car comes–when you hit the low beam HID lights…it takes about 2 seconds before they come up to full power. …..I decided that wasn’t the safest thing.

So, to simplify things I took out that switch and totally rewired the high beams adding a second barrier strip because I filled up the other one. And I’m going to add a diode to make low beams stay on when turning on high beams. While I’m in here I’ve done my best to use the appropriate gauge wire, color code the wire, cut to the correct length, heat shrink everything, and even label things. The clamp is because I found a good place to attach the starboard-side barrier strip relay and then epoxied the high beam HID relay too it. We’ll see if it works…..hopefully I didn’t get to tricky.

It’s fair to say the electrics are the toughest and most tedious part of the whole process.  I actually hate them, but I have to be doing them right for the importance I place in things. To keep my spirits up I did some other feel-good task including reinstalling my rear shock, chang the spark plugs that have about 20K miles on them,

and finally install the Spiegler clutch line I’ve been putting off.

It had been suggested by my FJR brethren that the line wasn’t that hard to replace if you had the tank up…..however I’m either dumb, impatient, or they’re nuts. The original cable did NOT come out without a serious fight and several cuts with sidecutters.

That big arc of the meaty piece is foam wrapped steel line that totally belied the flexible ends of the cable. I prefer to call it destructive extraction….. I didn’t put the new cable back in the exact route, but it’s pretty close and will work.

However, I see I’m going to have add yet another thing to my list.

Get Matching Spiegler Banjo Bolt

Two steps forward…..one step back.  It’s not August yet is it?