Mailman’s XS2 a full on restoration

Cool! Thanks for the reply Jim!

 

Ha! I had a set of dual horn Fiamm Freeway Blasters on my last bike. When I hit the horn it sounded like a Cadillac Eldorado bearing down on you! They were great!

 

Yeah, I’m keeping the horn. I’ve worked to hard to keep it looking like new. Although I like the Mr. Clean spritzer idea!

I didn’t get as much done as I’d hoped today. The work was kind of tedious and slow, but I’ll show you what I was doing today. I made a wiring connector for my new rectifier, it’s a plug and play piece with new female spade connectors, wire extensions and sheathing. All the wiring extensions were soldered and the soldered joints were all staggered so as to avoid a big lump in one spot, and the soldered areas were covered with heat shrink before covering the whole bundle with new silver sleeving. The multi plug was taken apart and all the spade terminals were shined up with a Dremel.


This has since been mounted back on the battery box and it’s connected to the harness and the wires tucked out of the way.
I also worked on the starter solenoid, I cleaned up my old battery cable and installed it onto the solenoid and plugged in the wire leads.
And lastly created a new main fuse to replace the glass tube fuse set up. This has also been installed on the bike and plugged in.


I’ll post up some photos of everything installed when I get it all finished. It’s a good thing I’m not working for somebody, they’d be on my ass for going so Slow!
Later,
—Bob

 

Thank you very much! ( I miss your posts by the way )

 

This is the second one I’ve used now. They are a Chinese import and very inexpensive ( at least when I bought these about a year and a half ago ) I bought three of them at the time. My understanding is they were mass produced for the burgeoning solar panel industry. I’ve been running one on my ‘77 for about a year and a half now, and I know others here are running them as well. I replaced the stock rectifier on my ‘77 because it wasn’t charging and testing indicated a rectifier failure. Here is the one I made for my ‘77 , including a photo of it mounted up beneath the battery box in the stock location.

 

You ever notice how all the little obligations of life have a way of bunching up at times. That’s me now.....tax preparations, car repair, doctor visits , yada yada yada.........I’ve been having a hard time making progress.
But today I managed to get a ....

So here we go,

Before I mounted my starter safety relay, I wanted to give it a good cleaning. Not only the outside and all the plug in connections , but I also took it apart and took some super fine sandpaper and cleaned the contacts inside and hit it with some contact cleaner, then put it back together , and plugged every thing in.


The wiring bundle for the safety relay has a ground terminal that need to be connected to shiny metal, so I took my Dremel and shined up the mounting location.



Then I was running short on time, but I started looking at my new voltage regulators wiring and realized it had four wires instead of the three in my harness, and some of the colors were different, uh oh...




I was wondering what to do about that, then remembered, this has already been covered by Retired Genleman ( I miss that guy ) and Five Twins in a most excellent article. Some out takes here below.



Here is a link to the article if you would like to read the whole thing. It’s a great article.
http://www.xs650.com/threads/regulator-rectifier.21485/

The next week has me away from the garage a lot. I’ll post some more when I get a little progress made.
Later,
Bob

 

ELECTRICAL SYSTEM UPGRADE CONCLUSION

I love this stage of the game. It’s just like building a new bike. Everything is clean or refurbished, it’s all so clean that I don’t even bother to change my clothes before working

I got all my supplies out and prepared to make a new wiring harness extension so I could plug my new voltage regulator directly into the harness.


All the wiring extensions were soldered.


And here is the finished bundle.


I got the regulator plugged in and then installed my new replacement brake switch. I broke the other one while tightening it with a wrench. It wouldn’t tighten securely, it kept slipping off, then I realized why. It doesn’t fit through a hole, it’s more of a forked slot. The two prongs were not aligned , once I straightened it, the switch tightened up perfectly with just my fingers.


With all the new components now mounted , I could tidy up the wires.


All of this was replaced. Starter solenoid, voltage regulator, main line fuse, rectifier, and front and rear brake switch.


Then I moved up front to my head lamp shell and started arranging the wires and making connections. What a spaghetti monster!


Head light is in! Yay! My bike has a face now.


The horn was installed next and plugged in.


So right now, all the electrical system, with the exception of the ignition is installed and wired up, ready to go.
I went ahead and zip tied the wiring in place on the frame and handlebars. The purists might squawk at the use of zip ties over factory style ties, but meh, I’m really not that fussy.


Still lots more to do. I’ll be posting more in a few minutes with some odd and ends.
Later!
Bob