Neater spaghetti bucket

[toglhot]

I've designed and put together a couple of much simplified harness' one for lights, the other for ignition, minus stuff I don't require, neutral light and so on. But still the spaghetti bucket lived up to it's name. I dislike untidy with a vengeance so made a bracket that sits inside the spaghetti bucket to try and keep things neat and make it easier to find and connect the wires.
Two grommets sit in the middle for routing earth wires through to earth connections and a couple of linked, Delrin, insulated terminal bridges sit either side of them for power connections. Mostly connected up, but still have to connect the headlight cables and speedo light cables, not sure about adding idiot lights, more procrastination needed there me thinks! The cables emanating from the switchgear are very, very light gauge, not sure if they'll handle the current, even though all lights are LEDs, so I may have to either solder in heavier gauge cables or change the switchgear.

 

[Downeaster]

Love the concept, but I'm a little confused (my normal state, actually...) The main structure is metallic? I understand the grommets and the insulated terminal posts on the horizontal part, but the series of holes and connections on the vertical part elude me. Seems like it would all be shorted together and grounded via the mounting points at the mounting points on the edges of the bucket.

 

[gggGary]

Morn'n DE!

Two grommets sit in the middle for routing earth wires through to earth connections and a couple of linked, Delrin, insulated terminal bridges sit either side of them for power connections.

but the series of holes and connections on the vertical part elude me.

A combo loom holder and ground bar. The two insulated studs are (presumably fused) power terminals.

 

[Downeaster]

Oh. Okay. I was thinking it was to replace bullet connectors for things like wiring from the handlebar switches and such. It looks like the "simplified" wiring doesn't include turn signals, so I guess there wouldn't be a lot of that anyway.

Thanks.

 

[toglhot]

Indicator wires from the rear and the switchgear are there but front indicators haven't been bolted on yet, neither has the headlight, but the indicator and headlight earths just attach to the earth bracket, power wires to the switchgear wires. Unfortunately, the headlight wires exit the LED in a single insulated tube and terminate in a huge terminal block which I can't remove because it looks like the earth is a knitted shroud around the power wires.
The bracket is really only a way around connecting multiple wires together for power and earth, four for power and five for earth from memory.

 

[toglhot]

Finished off the front wiring and spaghetti bucket. Still looks a little untidy, but neater than most I think. I even mounted the lens on a couple of wire safety straps to stop it pulling on the harness. I had, to buy these double female bullet connectors from China, couldn't find anyone in OZ who stocks them. Trying to find sub 6mm eye terminals was a job, same with 3mm blade terminals, they stock female blades but not males. And they complain that everyone is turning to online shopping - no bloody wonder.
Got to attack the back end now, mount the indicators and plug them and the tail light into the lighting harness.

 

[bosco659]

Looks great! I like the safety wire too. Usually the headlight assembly is left dangling from the harness. Nice work as always!

 

[toglhot]

I don't think the indicators would be legal, they aren't particularly bright. But I won't be riding it, so they'll do the job.

 

[jbbishop2]

A friend in New Zealand, Greg, is in the middle stages of building an XS650 cafe racer, making dummy brackets and such to see how things will fit. Here's his take on organizing the wiring in his headlight shell. The connectors are Wago 221 Lever-Nuts:

 

[toglhot]

Ooh, never seen them before, neat. Much better than those stupid bullet connectors. How do they connect to that round backing board?

 

[jbbishop2]

I believe he epoxied the connectors to the ring.

I haven't used Lever-Nuts for bike wiring yet, but I have used them for house wiring and they've been great.

 

[kshansen]

Never heard of them before. I'm guessing all wires in each "block" are connected together? Are they able to connect wires of different gauges? Like say you need to connect a 18 gauge wire to a 12 gauge wire.

 

[jbbishop2]

Yes, they're electrically like the wires are twisted together, but more secure, tidy, and handy.

"...solid, stranded and fine-stranded conductors ranging from 0.14 to 6 mm² (24–10 AWG)" from the Wago web page.

Wago and others also make connectors that look sort of similar that are one-time push-in things. These are better because you can disconnect and reconnect just by lifting the lever if you needed to change something.

My solder skills are poor, so for me it's nice to have an alternative.

Revival Cycles, a custom builder in Texas and on YouTube, uses and sells them, too

 

[bosco659]

Yes, they're electrically like the wires are twisted together, but more secure, tidy, and handy.

"...solid, stranded and fine-stranded conductors ranging from 0.14 to 6 mm² (24–10 AWG)" from the Wago web page.

Wago and others also make connectors that look sort of similar that are one-time push-in things. These are better because you can disconnect and reconnect just by lifting the lever if you needed to change something.

My solder skills are poor, so for me it's nice to have an alternative.

Revival Cycles, a custom builder in Texas and on YouTube, uses and sells them, too

Can you insert more than one wire into each hole or are you only supposed to place one in each hole and use multiple connectors? Just thinking about ground wires where it would be nice to use them like a terminal block.

 

[jbbishop2]

I'm pretty sure they're designed for single wires in each hole, but they make 5-holers. I guess you can just jumper from one to the next if you need a bunch of grounds close to each other.

 

[jbbishop2]

I'm pretty sure they're designed for single wires in each hole, but they make 5-holers. I guess you can just jumper from one to the next if you need a bunch of grounds close to each other.

Now that I look closer, that's what Greg does at the bottom of his ring, three five-hole connectors jumpered together.

 

[650Skull]

With some patience, untangling the wires and rearranging.

 

[Tinker Taylor]

What is the round insert bracket made of? This sounds like a good idea for my advancement now that my headlight bucket is still in my room.
'TT'

 

[jbbishop2]

I think you could make it from anything, but Greg's is painted plywood. It's pretty securely wedged and his shell is fairly shallow. It might be convenient if it was aluminum as it could be grounded to the bike and you could include ears on it to attach to the indicator mounts.

 

[Tinker Taylor]

I think you could make it from anything, but Greg's is painted plywood. It's pretty securely wedged and his shell is fairly shallow. It might be convenient if it was aluminum as it could be grounded to the bike and you could include ears on it to attach to the indicator mounts.

Thanks,
'TT'