Down under, an idiot and a 400F

O'Reilly's Auto here in the US sells them under the name brand MSD. They're waterproof electrical connectors and all of them are that color combo. Hopefully, you have a similar place or maybe MSD is sold there too?

http://www.oreillyauto.com/site/c/detail/MSD0/8187/N2160.oap?ck=Search_N2160_MSD_-1_1731&mn=MSD+Ignition&mc=MSD&pt=N2160&ppt=C0335
8187_v1.jpg


Edit: I think you meant the wires themselves. Anyhoo, if you meant connectors, there they are. LOL
 
No I meant wires. Probably didn't explain myself very well, but I need to extend the wires from the loom to the new location for the gauge connector blocks as I soldered them in and they're now too short.

I'd like to keep the same wire colours as the original Acewell wiring but think that's going to be difficult, so I may have to find any colour combination of wire and use that instead.
 
You might have some luck if you have a local auto electrician. Some will sell you a metre of this, a metre of that.

The price may be inflated but it's still can be cheap enough in the scheme of things.

Crazy
 
Jaycar might be an option. As much as I try to avoid them because their staff are trained in sales rather than electronics they are one of the last stores of that kind around my area.
 
Brodie said:
Jaycar might be an option. As much as I try to avoid them because their staff are trained in sales rather than electronics they are one of the last stores of that kind around my area.

last time I was in jaycar (checking out their amps and stuff - crap range by the way), they seemed to only sell rolls of wire in limited colours. larger versions of supercheap auto does however sell wire by the metre, again only in limited colours but if its only to bridge short gaps you might be ok.
a friend of mine rewired his Indian copy Vespa once with one big roll of blue wire....you can guess how well that went - 80s indian hardware copied from 60s vespas and rewired by a drunk Latvian with one colour wire.......
 
spotty said:
last time I was in jaycar (checking out their amps and stuff - crap range by the way), they seemed to only sell rolls of wire in limited colours. larger versions of supercheap auto does however sell wire by the metre, again only in limited colours but if its only to bridge short gaps you might be ok.
a friend of mine rewired his Indian copy Vespa once with one big roll of blue wire....you can guess how well that went - 80s indian hardware copied from 60s vespas and rewired by a drunk Latvian with one colour wire.......




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There is a trick to using one colour and not having a disaster, you buy lots of different colour heat shrink and use combinations of it at each end of the wire run so you know where the wire goes to and from. you can do single, double, triple or more to make unlimited(almost) wire colours and generally its a lot cheaper than buying a bunch of rolls of wire.
 
Maritime said:
There is a trick to using one colour and not having a disaster, you buy lots of different colour heat shrink and use combinations of it at each end of the wire run so you know where the wire goes to and from. you can do single, double, triple or more to make unlimited(almost) wire colours and generally its a lot cheaper than buying a bunch of rolls of wire.

and multi coloured heat shrink in lots of sizes can be got off ebay for very cheap
 
BMW used to do something similar, all black wires with numbered sleeves.
It worked real well until they broke off. :eek:
 
Last time I bought wire from Jaycar, which was a while ago, I got it by the meter. Might be different up here though.
 
Brodie said:
Last time I bought wire from Jaycar, which was a while ago, I got it by the meter. Might be different up here though.

Was in Jaycar today. They sell it by the metre but unfortunately the colour options are turd. Probably only about 4!
 
neevo said:
Was in Jaycar today. They sell it by the metre but unfortunately the colour options are turd. Probably only about 4!

I've been seriously thinking about going to a junkyard and pulling wiring harness from a relatively new car, there are probably a few only year or less old written off and scrapped. Shouldn't be too expensive as people wont want harness, (maybe in a few years but not at present?) usually switches and computer/mechanical parts
 
Been mucking around with other projects and lost time to work on the 400F.

However today I got back in the shed and started something I’ve been avoiding for a long time... seat v2.0

First up a refresher of where the bike sits:

AF55FB97-113C-4CA4-B451-A3638BF801AE_zpsswsl2imf.jpg


Had to remove the wiring harness because it’s hardly needed at this stage.

Many people have been hinting to use the rear end shape of the tank as a guide, so I grabbed some welding rod and set about copying the shape:

C860B8EA-23BF-4CDA-95D7-9FDAB03B8831_zpsexo6dut2.jpg


Next I took the tank and thought to copy the main centre strip and 2 side strips:

19DAF706-338A-4CF4-8284-CFD41DE206BE_zpsic9ee8md.jpg


Glued the welding rod to the underside to hold the shape:

0DC6A851-F561-459E-B9F9-893FB82A6F38_zpssyculixk.jpg


I’m still a fan of the seat area so I copied that in cardboard as the front half of the seat:

D00B38E6-92C3-4922-85F9-2E7DE14D8F02_zpsuehcfoyo.jpg


BD94BC38-9F22-497B-85D3-632106CAFB62_zps8i5szqpy.jpg


Combined the two (loosely) and discovered two things:

1. Getting the straight panels to merge nicely in a seat will require some artistic licence, eg I’ll need to shrink the width of the panels down a lot or merge it much nicer, at the moment it looks like shit and I don’t think it will improve much with the current idea. I don’t want a square seat either, just don’t like the look.
2. The added length of the seat does look better balanced on the rear end.

32062361-23CB-417E-B5AD-BC916DC2401D_zpsgunxoh2l.jpg


5C1DE1CC-9AC1-472D-911E-69C8EF754930_zpsrlxeaczi.jpg


49BA335C-46C8-47F6-8C5F-481F059F0124_zpsqdxzitbq.jpg


So that’s where I’m up to so far. Unfortunately I’ve run out of argon, otherwise I’d start to cut some steel and tack some stuff up, so much easier to get these angles and curves in steel than cardboard.

My next move will be to make the frame so I can get the length I want. I think it will be about 1” less than the cardboard version (1” longer than the current steel seat). Then I’ll play around with a few more cardboard options before committing in steel. I think it’ll end up being another compound curve seat unless anyone has some ideas on how to merge the flatter shape of the rear of the tank with the rounded seat I prefer.
 
I find it very important to mock up the upholstered portion of the seat when I am deciding on the cowl shape. You can carve up an old seat foam to roughly fit and wrap it or paint it dark like the cover you intend to use to approximate the end result. I make mine from fiberglass with the seat base and cowl as a single component, so it is easy for me to shape the rigid foam for the cowl and soft foam for the seat at the same time. Looks like you can do the same thing adjusting your cardboard mock up with the seat foam until you get the shape of both to look like you want. I see an awful lot of bikes that would have looked a lot better if the upholstered portion didn't look like the separate project it was.
 
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