Electrical 4

I get a lot of questions about wiring motorcycles. Sometimes people are just trying to fix their blinkers and aren’t familiar with how motorcycle electrics work – but more often than not I get requests about trimming down electronics for custom riders.

An essential part of building any sort of chopper, bobber, cafe racer, brat bike, or rat rod is getting rid of all the unnecessary items. These days I just grab my wire snips and start trimming away with no regard for common sense and caution – but if you are working with your first wiring loom I’m going to try and give you some guidance right now.

You might have checked the wiring diagram for your bike already and seen something like this:

The above diagram is from a Honda CB750 Custom dual cam bike. Lots of 70’s and 80’s bikes will look the same, especially the four cylinders.

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Yamaha used about 15 miles of excess unneeded cable when it built the xs11’s in the factory. On the left you can see all the stock wiring which I pulled into the open and cut the sheaths off of. After half a day of determining which wires I actually needed to run the bike I ended up with the picture on the right. Just a few lone wires neatly tucked alongside the frame rails.

The wiring that exists basically connects the battery, ignition system, ballast resistor, coils and regulator. Besides that every electronic component on the bike was removed. I still need to run a couple wires for the headlight and tail light, but they will be on their own seperate fused circuit so it is independent of the bikes other electrical. It was a lot of work, but it turned out great. One step at a time this bike is making a major transition.