Saturday, July 14, 2012

Holy Molex!

I noticed a broken wire from what I believe is the low fuel warning system. It goes to a connector that was above the rear carb into the wiring harness. Luckily the connector is a standard Molex.

You can see the broken wire on the left, there should be two wires going into that connector and there's only one. The other one is hiding in the sheath. I won't even comment on the duct tape disaster on the right.

I extracted one of the wires and then thought, why am I doing this, I'm just going to replace everything anyways...

Here's the replacement connector from Radio Shack. I think it was about $2.19. While you can probably find it for less online I was able to pick it up from the local store and have it in my hand immediately.


One last reference photo so I know which wire goes where. Molex connectors are always keyed so they can only go one way.

Clipped all the wires. 

Crimped the male terminals. 

Crucial to a good crimp is a good crimper. While this isn't the best crimper in the world it was at least affordable. I got it from Amazon for my Weatherpack connectors I used on the Norton. They are far superior to Molex as they offer much better locking and actual weatherproofing.

 Crimps are recognized as much better than soldering as soldering can make the wires brittle from the heat.

All snug. One less thing to worry about, well, until something else pops up.

And that something would be the oil pressure sending unit. I started the bike up and oil poured out from the sending unit where the spade connector is. No idea what caused this to fail unless I had too much oil in the engine. Now I need to find a replacement or just block up the hole in the engine until I can.

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