| Author | Message | ||
     Natexlh1000 |
Last night my blinkers stopped working. After poking around under the steering neck, I found the culprit: another broken ground wire. Why do these bikes have such a hard time keeping the grounds in one piece? I have fixed grounds on this bike at least three times so far. Anyways, Time to eat, wash up and RIDE. | ||
| Electraglider_1997 |
Keeps us in tune with our bikes. Anyways, easy enough to fix. | ||
| Panhead_dan |
I ran a heavy gauge wire from the neg battery terminal to one of the starter through bolts and have enjoyed much less fussing (like zero) with it. | ||
| Natexlh1000 |
....Like every sportster since the invention of the electric starter? Sounds like a plan. | ||
| Natexlh1000 |
I'd like to also add that I already added a fat jumper wire between the frame and the triple clamp. I never found out where the location of that break was but gave up and just bypassed it  | ||
| Od_cleaver |
I keep thinking that the electrical engineer that designed Buell's electrical system was really a bunch of 3rd year summer interns out of a computer engineering program with zero practical hardware experience beyond their homemade computer. | ||
| Etennuly |
Od_c, Having met some of these folks I would never say that kind of thing about them. On the other hand, my '06 has had 19 separate wiring failures thus far. So I would tend to agree with you. Looks like they did not take vibration, heat and movement into their equations. Each of the nineteen failures on mine have been directly related to these three causes. | ||
| Towpro |
That sounds like the wrong wire was used, not the guy who designed the placement. Hd might have saved a couple bucks be telling Eric "here, use this wire, we got a good deal on it". I know my 07 had the ground to the headlight open in under 5K miles. Instead of ripping the harness up to look for it I just ran a new ground to the headlight circuit but left the old ground attached so it would back feed something I might have missed. | ||
| Motorfish |
Was the Uly wired by Lucas???  | ||
| 7873jake |
No. Because anything wired by Lucas would have a positive earth BUT the entire harness could be replaced in an afternoon with 5 wires, a crimper and a pint. | ||
| Rwven |
I picked up some extremely flexible #8 wire at a marine store. I crimped and soldered a large ring terminal on it. I took the 4 ground wires leading to the steering head, stripped, spliced and soldered them to the #8 wire. | ||
| Od_cleaver |
Etennuly, I have owned my '07 Buell for 4 years. I paid my dues to politely speak my mind. The Buell engineers have either shown themselves to be inexperienced or over worked people that were not given sufficient time (and/or money) to evaluate and improve their designs in a number of areas before the bike went into production. I may call my baby ugly but I will not tolerate some BMW owner doing the same. | ||
| Etennuly |
I hear you and totally agree with you. What you said is IMHO correct, I was agreeing in a sarcastic way. I did not mean to offend. Sorry. Mostly what I have found with my bike's wiring failures is that they were not routed well, the wire is of a minimal quality for flexibility, the sheathing is of too low of a melt point and it abrades too easily. | ||
| Electraglider_1997 |
Part of the fun of the Buell ULY is knowing it's in's and out's better than most other rides. That being said, all bikes I've owned have had their set of problems, all of them. I still love the crap out this here ULY. It seems to be built for abuse. It is not a namby pamby bike. | ||
| Schwara |
I am electrically handicapped with zero experience (if you ignore my electric train incident as a child) but this sounds like something I need to educate myself on prior to problems. Do any of you with fixes or better setup mods have pictures and descriptions (wire type, gage, connectors … grocery list for hardware store) so that I can buy the parts now, make some modifications, and hopefully avoid some headaches later? Thanks a lot, I appreciate it. | ||
| Reepicheep |
Don't panic Schwara... My 07 Uly has 18k miles without even any minor electrical issues, so they must have been a pretty damn clever set of summer interns. My undergraduate degree is a Bachelors of Science in Electrical Engineering Technology, and I have found the wiring on all of my Buells to be of sound design and execution. At least as good, and often better, than the many Japanese bikes I have broken and fixed over the years. Air cooled VTwin motorcycles are a demanding environment, so I'm not saying nobody will ever have a problem. But to say that they are poorly designed is just silly. If you find a shortcoming, prove it, fix it, and post it (like the 77 connector). Note even with the 77 connector, which *is* a problematic connection. Both the wiring and the connector are industry standard for that type of application, and the "superior" fix isn't some other "better" connector, it's to just solder the stupid things together (which is a good solution, but trades off ease of testing and service in order to get a more reliable connection). And I have something like 50,000 miles on XB's at this point, and haven't the only problem I ever saw with the 77 connector was a little sizzle and steam once when I hit it with a pressure washer. The obvious solution was to quit force feeding it water, and I have had no problems since. |
