My xb12r front end hack

[Chicknstripn]

Nicholas thanx. I read your original post a while back. It's kind of what inspired me to give this a go.
Thanks for that pic but I was looking for was the reroute under your airbox base. I think I have mine planned out it's just the execution I'm worried about!
Thanks for the tip on the notebook. I have a bunch of wires labeled with masking tape. Hadn't thought of backing that up with a notebook. Thanks.

 

[heagachongoose]

I'm putting vertically stacked Firebolt projectors on my 1125. +1 for the verticals!

 

[nicholas900]

I don't have any pics under the cover plate that I can find. PG19 of my build has a pic of the harness I made. It should give you a good idea of bow it routes. It mounts to the frame like normal i just used bolts instead of plastic push pins. The new part of the harness comes straight up through the cover plate to the fuse/really/ecm/horn. The engine sensor portion is un changed and mounts like stock. If you do run wires up that area make sure you have your ignition coil mounted when you plan it out as the harness comes up right behind it. The front portion with connectors goes in the headlight and the controls and gauge wires meets up in there. The headlight bucket holds quite a bit of wire and connectors.

Best of luck!

One other thing is your headlight is smaller like 6" ? The 7" headlight takes up more space and might close the gap between your gauges. Just something to think about.

 

[Chicknstripn]

My headlight is 6.5... ...I think? It's definitely smaller than 7". It's not in it's final position. I just threw it up there for an idea of what things would look like. And thanks again for the wiring tips. It's a little over whelming right now seeing the spagheti mound of wires!
I've been checking out your harness. I don't want to totally copy your design but I definitely will use it as a refferance. And I like your idea of keeping all the sensor wires for the motor together and unchanged. I was hoping to keep as much of the original harness together but that seems near impossible. I think the clutch sensor is the only wiring that will run to the front of the bike without modification.
Time to start my wiring notebook!
This is DEFINITELY going to take me some time to finish!

 

[nicholas900]

Haha. Yeah it will take some time. As long as you mark well, and keep notes it will go fine. Copy all you want. Take your time and solder well. Biggest thing is to make sure the wires are soldered well and insulated well. We all know how these motors shake, so make sure the harness is protected by any sharp edges. This is the most important part.

Once you get your harness made, you will want to tape it up. I'd avoid electrical tape. It looks bad and is stiff. It also leaves a gooey mess. I get this stuff from http://m.advanceautoparts.com/mt/shop.advanceautoparts.com/p/dorman-conduct-tite-1-in.-x-10-ft.-black-cold-shrink-tape-85274/5760132-P?un_jtt_v_cookiecheck=on&un_jtt_redirect. It is flexible and looks nice.

 

[TPEHAK]

Long story short, do not touch the main harness box, just buy high temperature wire http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001ALN0KK?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o03_s00 and heat sleeve http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002TRHAB4?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o09_s00 and route all useless wires back above the engine to the airbox, relocate all useless stuff (horn, relays, lock, etc) in the airbox and eliminate useless plugs, keep in the front area only wires you need. Use the high temperature wires and the heat sleeve only near the engine area because those wires are pretty thick and not flexible, for the rest use regular wires. Done!

 

[Chicknstripn]

I appreciate all the advice that's been thrown my way concerning this insane project.
It's been a while since I've been able to touch the bike.
Its been sitting with the engine rotated and all the wires, relays, fuse box, ECM and sensors moved to the airbox area. Looks like a big mess of nasty spaghetti! I've labeled some wires and tried to plan an attack on others but am daunted by the task of cutting so many critical wires. Since my bike is an R there are a crap load of wires to shorten and extend in order to make this work.
That being said I'm thinking of buying an S wiring harness to make things a whole lot simpler.
I have two questions concerning this:
Will a uly harness also work?
And is $125 a good price for a used S harness?

 

[TPEHAK]

Did you check the harness wiring diagram you are going to buy? I do not think there is a big difference between the Buell harnesses complexity, so anyway you'll need to open and modify the wiring. But it can be a big difference between the Buell harnesses (different wire color codes, different connection sequence, different wires length etc), so if you are not sure that you can complete the wiring properly and want to keep the original harness to backup just in case you can buy the same harness.

If you have already opened the harness and rotated the engine it should be easy to understand the harness scheme. Just clarify the parts you are going to remove under the airbox, make sure that there is enough space in the airbox to place all parts you want to relocate. Then check the wiring diagram, see each unit you are going to relocate under the airbox and see the wires connected to the unit, each wire in most cases has unique color combination, so it is pretty easy to find the wire and follow the wire route. Each unit has numbered socket, the same numbers you can see on the wiring diagram near each unit, so it should not be an issue to understand who is who. Some wires with different colors in the harness can be spliced together, you can see in the wiring diagram that the wire is spliced with another wires, but diagram does not show the splice location, so if it will be necessary you'll need to find the splice place on the harness. If you are going to splice the wire in another place, pay attention the wiring diagram and carefully check if it will affect the scheme.

Then reroute the wires, keep extra length to trim the wires later. Pack the wires. The wires should be routed far away from heating parts. If it is impossible to route the wires far away from heating parts use high temperature wires and heat sleeves in those areas. If you cannot plan wiring and wires length in advance you can use split heat sleeves, so you can pack the wires in the split heat sleeves at the very end when you have already routed wires and attached units.

 

[Chicknstripn]

There's a big difference between the R and S harness. The S and X harnesses are actually quite similar. The S and X harnesses have all the "stuff" I want to move already at the rear of the harness. Modifying the R harness(my original harness) will require a ton of work. The wires aren't laid out in any type of "simple" fashion.
To answer your question no I have not looked at the wiring diagram. With my current harness I haven't felt the need to since everything has been hands on. And with the harness I've been looking at I can see exactly what is what and what goes where from experience and comparison with my current harness.
I do think you have given me some good advice. I'll start studying the wire diagram. It can't hurt to be more familiar with what I'm working with.
Thanks for the advice

 

[snrusnak]

How'd you cut such perfect circles in the sheet metal???

 

[Chicknstripn]

I did it a little ass backward since I don't have the right tools. I found my centers and drilled a pilot hole. Then I set my calipers to the radius I wanted. Using the pilot hole as my center I scribed a very fine circle around the pilot hole. Then I used my dremel tool with a metal cuting disk to cut the hole out. I tried to leave a little of the scribe line visible as I did my cut. Always better to leave too much material than the take too much off. Easier to remove material/metal than to add.
I used a half round bastard file to finish the hole off.
I don't know how much a quality hole saw/drill attachment cost but it would make cuting those holes a
WHOLE lot easier!
I usually do things the hard way. Gives me more of that quality me time in the garage

 

[tukkayak]

Chicknstripn, I am thinking of doing this also. How did this turn out? WOW! 4 years later!