Slow Monster rebuild

[350TSS]

Slob
Many thanks for your time and effort it makes an impossible (for me) job a hell of a lot easier.

[350TSS]

I want to braze some small 2mm steel brackets (c12 in total) to the inside of the frame tubes to attach the wiring loom to so that I can lose the, in my opinion, ugly rubber straps adorning the frame (6) and also, at the front of the frame, to provide fitting points for the 4 x CF air scoops (6).

I have been concerned how I single handedly will hold the brackets in situ parallel to the axis of the frame tube and central to it whilst I tacked them on.
I came up with this knocked up out of 10mm aluminium offcuts from the brake hanger plate as a brazing jig which, hopefully, will not act as too much of a heat sink and give me a sporting chance to at least tack braze them in the right position.

[slob]

I woke up this morning thinking about the kill switch, not knowing how the M-Unit functions without playing with one, I’ve moved the ignition feed to remove the possibility of the kill switch shutting down all the electrics on the ‘Aux’ output, which might shut down your tail light etc. You’ll need to short the ‘Config’ input to Earth another way to program the device. Diagram updated.

[350TSS]

Spent a good couple of hours in the garage today making a wiring jig out of an old 18mm plywood fitted wardrobe door and some steel tube taken from some broken gym equipment (at 60mm OD same size as the M900 steering head tube) and aluminium cut off the “acquired” redundant road sign. Seems like quite a lot of work to do something I could just do on the bike, but I have 3 reasons for taking the time to do this:
a) wiring is one of those fiddly jobs which requires a calm measured approach. I am not good at it and the terminated wire is either, a tad too short or just not too long to warrant shortening it, my results always look amateur it is never just right. I lack the patience for it so I can only take it in one or two hour stretches, if I did it on the bike that would be all I could do because the paraphernalia would be all over the bike/bench and getting in the way of whatever else I wanted to do;
b) I can move the loom jig to inside the house lay it out on the floor in the spare room with enough space around and work on it when insomnia strikes
c) It is January and the garage is cold and is likely to be so for another month at least.
I have measured up and simulated the position of all the relevant equipment in the headstock area which will be the most challenging (read congested) and with the help of Slob’s diagram should be able to build and test the loom off the bike in the next couple of weeks.
I managed to find a 25mm rear wheel spindle, nut, adjuster side plates and adjuster blocks on ebay for £40. I will wait to enlarge the existing 17mm spindle slots in the swinging arm until it is off the bike.

[TimDW]

Very cool build
Keep it up!

C) that's why I'm building my M900 in the kitchen, that and being recently single...

[350TSS]

Started on the wiring today and it did not go well.
I thought it would be best to start with the battery so that I can use it to test each circuit as I build it.
Way back at the beginning of the project I bought some 16mm sq welding cable and some suitably sized tinned copper cable lugs; the standard Ducati HD leads (to earth, the solenoid and the starter motor) are at best about 10mm square. I used welding cable because it has lots of fine strands and is therefore very flexible and obviously good at carrying large amperage.
My first problem was that I realised I did not have a battery terminal protector (boot thingy that goes over the positive terminal and I spent a long time looking in my saved car bits/junk boxes to see if there was anything suitable but when I did find a car solenoid terminal cover it was perished. I am pretty sure I can fit a new boot after the cable has a lug attached on the end.
At the time I bought the cable and lugs, knowing I was going to have to build a new loom, I bought a rather nice ratchet crimper with multiple interchangeable jaws for all the different cable sizes.
I terminated the cable from the MUV2 unit to my RCD 30 amp “fuse” using the cable supplied the MUV2 manufacturer (c 6mm square) and fitted it into the RCD OK (grub screw in a sleeve). The lead the other side of the “fuse” to the battery I would use my 16mm welding cable and it fitted fine into the “fuse” (grub screw and sleeve again).
Fitting the battery lug was another story, I think the lugs were tinned for a reason, they are meant to be soldered. They definitely are not for crimping. Trouble was that the ratchet crimper has to reach the end of it’s travel before the ratchet would release (presumably to ensure a consistent final clamping pressure on the crimped connection). I managed to close the lug about 4 clicks on the ratchet and there was no way it was closing enough by hand to either grip the copper core of the cable or reach the end of the ratchet. I tried old fork tubes over the hand grips, eventually, I put it in the vice and it closed enough to release the ratchet but the cable still was not gripped adequately by the lug. Over an hour buggering about and no connection made. It will be soldered tomorrow and the inevitable loss of insulation sheath (rubbery not PVC) will be heat shrink wrapped. Another school day.

[slob]

Main fuse wiring simplified, diagram updated

[350TSS]

The postman brought my second hand rear spindle and axle blocks today and the blocks (from an S2) do not fit inside the M900 swinging arm. (????) They are about a mm thicker and about 2mm deeper than the original M900 ones, which incidentally have about a 1mm of up and down play in the M900 swinging arm. A bit more unforeseen work is required.

The wiring work progresses and I have to admit reluctantly I am quite enjoying it, first, I can do it sitting down saving my arthritic knees and hips.
Second, it is quite challenging, thinking through spatial problems, where to put connectors and where to split common feeds and how that impacts on the main loom and maintainability, working out which colour wire on the ignition switch from the old loom is the supposed to be the colour shown on the wiring diagram, remembering to put the right set on cable lugs when you solder them so that they connect with no twisting etc., etc.
Also, working with new tools and materials, the ratchet cable crimper I have is just nice to work with once you have worked out which of the 18 or so possible slots is required to achieve the perfect crimp (it has 5 pairs of interchangeable heads) and heat shrink cable sleeve is just brilliant stuff, providing mechanical support for crimped connections, acting as a colour code when you do not have the ”right” two colour cable and tidying up any insulation suffering the after effects of soldered connections.

I did discover a small problem with the starter solenoid, there is a very small 2 pole female connector to the power and starter button on the top which I will not be able to salvage from the old loom and after extensive internet searching seems to be unobtainium. A new solenoid for a Z1000 from China for £8 with a different connection arrangement was eventually settled on, Ducati boxed ones are about £40, my original has a Hitachi sticker on the back, they probably all come from the same factory anyway.
Whilst progress was made, manufacturing a new loom is going to take a long time as I have not yet started on the 2/4/6/10 way connectors yet.

[jerry]

i recently got a yamaha made by denso solenoid for my S4 in Thailand for £7 had to cut off the 2 pin conector and use butt crimps for the new one ,,, the ducati ones are a ripoff price if they actually had any in stock would have been £75

[utopia]

Could you not just cut off the old connector, complete with two short wire tails, then butt-crimp the whole thing to your new loom ?
A secondary advantage would be that you retain the colour coding on the wires adjacent to the connector.

Incidentally, I have discovered that the best way to butt-join two wires is to use a small butt-crimp and then cover it with glue-lined shrinkwrap.
This avoids soldering (and the associated tendency to fail just next to the solder) and the glue-lined shrinkwrap both seals the joint against moisture and (crucially) gives mechanical support to the joint across the insulation sleeve, not the wire, which guards against subsequent failure
I used to make my own mini butt-crimps by rolling a tube (double layer) of thin copper sheet around a suitable nail, drill etc, but I reckon you can buy small enough ones .. have a look at those sold for fishing tackle.
I like to use a crimp of about the same OD as the insulation on the wire as this give a nice, neat finish with minimum rigidity.
I also try to arrange for the mating strands of wire to mesh with each other inside the crimp, ie the crimp length is the same as the bared connector length on each individual wire.
Glue-lined shrinktube is cut long enough to overlap the insulation by a few mm each side of the crimp.
This system has the advantage over proprietary butt crimps with their own shrinktube that you don't damage the shrinktube when you crimp them up, as its installed afterwards.

The other thing I discovered when re-looming my Dommie is that a heat gun/hairdryer is your best friend .. for softening the wires.
I wouldn't start a wiring job without one now.

[Darren69]

The standard ones are made by Hitcahi iirc and the Ducati ones are a rip off. Any suitable 12v solendoid will probably do the job as long as its rated for the load (Amps). And those 2 wire plugs often fail anyway so best to get rid of them. I have a s/hand Honda 250 Superdream solenoid fitted to my Lav 1200 triple and it works just fine for the last 6-7 years no problems.

[350TSS]

Utopia: it never even occurred to me to do it that way round - I was so fixated on building a loom and getting my hands on a connector to attach to the loom – Doh!!!

[sram]

Enjoying this thread very much!
I recently replaced the solenoid on my M600. This unit is a perfect fit for the original and works well. https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?m...2F152166099915
It is hardwired and so I had to change the connectors, but it’s relatively neat and also out of view, underneath the tank and battery box.

[350TSS]

Some progress on the wiring see below.
The aforementioned ratchet crimper is centre picture in yellow. I bought very cheaply (£2.50 ish) an automatic wire stripper (in red and black) which works amazingly well, removing the sheath without damaging the copper cores at all.
All the wires are now in the right place except regulator/alternator and side stand cut out switch which I do not think I will bother fitting. The hard bit now is to fit the multiple pin connectors.
I intend to do away with bullet and Lucas type spade connectors wherever possible and am using waterproof connectors from flea bay (rated at 11 amps), these suffer from 2 disadvantages: 1. they are bigger than bullets and absorb precious space, and 2. the connector pins are fragile and need to be crimped very accurately or they do not fit into the plastic housing. Trying to force them in only causes them to break – guess how I know this. There is then the knock on that the connection has to be re-made and you lose 12mm or so off the length of the wire (re-stripping etc,), if you do it twice then your very accurately cut to length lead starts to look a bit distant from the connection point – guess also how I know this.
My jaws on my ratchet crimper are too wide for the pin connectors, I obviously discovered this after I had buggered up one set of terminal tangs. I think I will have to modify an old set of snipe nose pliers (with a thin grindstone in my Dremel) to get a crimping device that works.
Where I do not have the correct coloured cable (eg. a yellow striped green) I have been shrink wrapping 4mm long green idents every 75mm or so on a yellow cable. It is boring work but nice to do it “correctly” so whoever gets the bike after I am in my box can work out what goes where. I stopped doing it around the steering head bearing part of the loom as it increases the stiffness of the cables there. For reasons of congestion behind the steering head bearing I am putting the multi-pin connectors in front of the steering stem tube. There will be 2 x 6 pins for the instruments, 1 x 4 headlamp, 4 x 2 pins RH /LH indicators and front brake light switch and kill switch, and one other probably 6 pin for LH switch unit. The regulator connector will be below the bottom yoke.