Power part 2

   This post should where has the power gone! When the fairing was refitted, the USBs were connected up. It was a real treat to see them work first time. The USB with voltmeter was particularl good. I turned the bike off and left it until the next time I was able to do some more fettling.

 
At the next visit I turned the ignition to be greeted with the sound of relays clicking and dull dashboard lights. I looked at he voltmeter and it was showing 9 volts. It occured to me that the LEDs onthe USBs had run down the battery over a week. I connected the batery charger and went away to think about the situation. I decided to test the hypothosis. Once the battery was showing recharged I pulled the fused for the USBs and sat back to see what would happen. I went back to the bile a few days later, using a multimeter i tested the voltage of the battery. It had dropped again but not quite as far. The new fuse box has LEDs to show when a fuse has blown. It was with some frustration I disconnected the power feed from the battery to the fuse board. The charger was reconnected. The voltage was checked after a few days. No loss of power and the bike would start on the button. Now what?

 

   It took a few minutes for the issue to percolate in my bonce but the action was clear. I need to switch off the fuse booard when it is not needed. I could wire a switch into the heavy duty power feed so the solution had to involve and relay. I had a suitable relay in the tool box. I changed the post terminal tag connect to the live feed wire from the battery to a spade connector. That connector went on the replay. I made a jump wire with a post connector one end of the 27amp wire and a spade on the other end. Now I had a relay in between the battery and the fuse board. The wiring was checked with the multimeter. there was no current getting the fuse board. I put two spade conectors on the wires of a twin cable and conected them to the switch side of the relay. I stripped the wires at the other end of the cable and touched them off the battery. The repaly and fuse board reacted when power was applied to the switch wires. So that works.

   The relay needs somewhere to live. Luckily the battery box has a handy size void at the rear of the box which forms part of the rear inner mudguard. It was a simple job to drill a hole through the mudguard, its plastic, and use a plastic number plate nut and bolt to secure the relay to the mudguard. I had measured the jump wire to allow the relay to be fitted in the void.  

    The only problem is that I now have to decide where the switch is to be fitted and what type of switch to use. Then I have to buy it. Then fit it.

   I had a suspicion the battery would not be capable of sustaining so many warning lights. the battery is tiny compared with that of a BMW which is essentially a small car battery rather than a standard bike battery on the pan. The difference is clear but now I have resolved the issue.    

Cleaning

   Despite washing, polish and painting of the running gear the bodywork and wheels still looked dull. They had been washed several times but it does not shine. I set to washing the wheel with Gunk, an engine degreaser Click HERE for website thiinking that would do the job. Things got serious when I got the toothbrush out. The Gunk was loosening the dirt but it need sone scrubing to lift the dirt off the wheels. Cast wheels with twin discs are fiddlily to clean. There are lots of nooks and crannies. Forty minutes of scrubbing had made a difference to the front wheel. It looked much better. The back wheel is not so difficult to get at so gunking and scrubing did not take so long or was as difficult. There is still some skin on my knuckles when I was finished. Washing off the Gunk with hot soapy water revealed some shiny wheels.

   I decided to try the gunk on the bodywork. There was quite alot of accumulated tar on the lower half of the fairing. I tried brushing Gunk on which had little effect. I then put sone gunk on the rag on gently rubbed the area. I was pleased with the results on two fronts; 1,the paint did not come off and B the muck did come off. The Gunk dissolved the tar and cut through the road dirty. With this discovery I went all over the body work with gunk on a rag. More hot soapy water the rinse off the Gunk and the job was done. The bike fairly sparkled. It made a nice job of th ethe crud that had built up on the headlights lens.

   The bike dried quickly in the sun so I thought "make hay". I found some T-Cut (click HERE for website) in the garage cupboard. I carefully applied the T-cut. If you are not careful you can cut right through the paint. I let the T-Cut dry and buffed it off. Again there was dirt ont he rag and the paint shone a little more. Whilst we are at it I might as well go mad I thought. I rummaged in the garage cupboard for Turtle wax polish (click HERE for website) . This was applied to the panels and allowed to dry then was buffed off. For the first time the bike shone. Metallic grey is not that easy it make shine been there was a clear difference between starting and finishing.

   The downside is that the smell of  Gunk lingers so we had a smelly garage for several days. My hands were filthy and there was buckets of water about so there are no photos of the cleaning session.

Exhaust system

   I had tackled the headers whilst I was dealing with the clean and paint of the engine after the service, Click HERE to read about that. The silencers had both been taken off at an early stage and parked up at the back of the garage. They where not in bad shape. a scratch here and there and just a bit grubby. They where quite clean because you can get at them easily so general cleaning is not a problem.

It had occured to me that once I broke the seals on the exhausts they would probably not be reusuable. The OEM exhaust clamps where it bit tired. I figured I would probably break them as I removed them and so I got a set of exhaust gaskets and stainless steel clamps.

   It took a bit of fiddling to get the graphite gaskets off the pipes. As expected they were destroyed in the process. I used wire wool to clean up the are where the gasket had been.

   The jobs was simply enough. Wash the the dirt off. Use Gunk degreaser for the heavy stuff, rinse with hot water. They where better but to finish them off toothbrush and Autosol (click HERE for website). The Autosol and elbow grease did a good of removing the barked on grime. The photo doe snot begin to do the job justice.

  The silencers were returned to their corner of the garage until they were ready to refit to the bike. Fitting them to the bike was a doddle. The gaskets slipped on snugly, I was very careful with them. I remembered to slip the clamps over the pipe beforejoining up the silencer to the header collector pipe. The mounting bolts went strightin, with a dab of copper slip to help get them out if they ever come off again. The clamps were nipped up. Lter when the bike was run there were no leaks fro the exhaust.

 

POWER !!

   These big touring machines, like the Pan, have lots of options for accessories. In my case I have a bunch of options on my wish list.

• USB connection to charge my phone seems a no brainer. If we are having one then lets have one in each fairing pocket. 
• A power connection for the Sat Nav (I don't yet have)
• An accessory power port
• Heated seats are a possiblilty 

   There is a connection in the left hand fairing for accessory power. You have to but a wiring sub harness called a quartet harness. Unfortunately I do not want the accessories designed by the harness. I had a fish round tinterweb and came up with a small fuse panel. This is a fancy one as it has a LEDs which light up when the fuse fails.

   It took quite sometime to work out where the fused board would fit. After much trial and error I found the board would fit neatly in the tail piece. There is even a rubber strap to secure the unit. The strap is really for the Ignition Control Unit (ICU) which the Fused board sits on.

   I ran a 25amp rated twin wire cable from the battery to the fuse board. I crimped round post connectors to fit on the battery terminals. From the fuse individual twin wire cables were run to the back each of the fairing pockets. There they connected with USB sockets. The cables were neatly run and tied down.

Click HERE to read about fitting the USB sockets.
Click HERE to read about connectinghte wiring using new plugs

   It was not a complicated job once the thinking part of the design was done. Routing the connection around the fuse board is not as neat as I would like but then the fuse board is dsigned for a boat not a bike.