Cleaning electrical connections

As mentioned in various places, I'm in the process of redoing the front brakes on my 750J. The calipers are done, and back on the bike; I just mounted the master cylinder, and fed the wires from the brake switch down into the headlight bucket.

Here's where it gets topical. I decided while I had the thing open to start cleaning all the connections in there and coating them with dielectric grease after I put them back together. I did all the bullet connectors I could find, but I'm not quite certain how to deal with the female part of the spade lug connectors. I don't have anything thin and long enough to stick down into the housing to bend the retaining tab up.

Any suggestions?

 

i can usually get them with a straight point pick or a paper clip but it can't be one of those cheap paper clips with the notches there not strong enough

 

I generally grind a metal ladies finger nail file down to the width of the female spade connector. Seems to work pretty good!

 

SEE, thats what I like about this forum and the people in it. I learn more every time i come here, which is daily.

 

Get a dental pick for a dollar or two. Works great for me. They are also very useul for removing o-rings.

 

I liked the idea of the ground-down nail file, so I ran down to the local "drugstore" and picked up a few. Ground one down to the internal width of one of the larger spade lugs, picked a connector with three wires on it, unhooked it and started sanding away. Even did the exposed male lugs on the other connector. Everything looked good until I went to plug them back together.

The red wires in that block had corrosion on them that I hadn't noticed; the wire leading to the female connector broke off inside the block. A quick check of the wiring diagram showed that the wires I was working on come from the main switch. Yay team...

 

The Bullet-end and Quick-connects are there for one reason only:
To speed-up the process of getting the Bike further down the assembly line without too much of a delay.

Rather than spending time cleaning the connections ... you could excise the connections and plug-in's and solder and heat-shrink the wires together.

The reliability factor goes up to 100%
The resistance issues are eliminated.
The Birds Nest inside the Headlight Bucket gets organized and reduced.

 

Interesting idea. I'm going to have to take issue with one point, though.

Removing the master cylinder from the 750 Max would involve cutting two sets of wires; one for the brake light switch, and the other for the brake fluid level sensor (which I still can't find the connectors for... but I digress). In other words, the connection may be 100% reliable, but the task of replacing a given component has been made more difficult.

 

I like to go over the connectors with some folded pieces of 800 or 1000-grit sand paper, and then stuff them full of silicone grease before re-connecting them. that way they stay moisture-proof, and unplugging them is a whole lot easier later on.

also, I gently crimp the female connectors with a pair of pliers for a tighter fit.

 

The best way to clean contacts that I have found is to media blast them. This does not mean turning the television toward your motorcycle and blaring CNN. Pasche sells a nifty toy called an Air Eraser http://www.paascheairbrush.com/2005_par ... 20List.pdf
This little puppy will clean off all the years of accumulated junk but keep in mind, it won't do a thing for the corrosion up under the insulation (caused by capillary action of water). Wipe the clean contacts with dielectric grease and re-install them.
For reference, the pins and connectors used on our beloved Yamahas are a product line from a company called AMP (now part of Tyco). They are of the FastOn family and can be purchase from reputable (and some not so reputable) sources such as Digikey and Allied Electronics.
Rick has a point, eliminate the connector and the reliability issues go away (DON'T chuck the connectors folks, they are useful). This comes at the expense of being able to readily remove your headlight bucket and/or other components as mentioned by Schmuck. This route still does not address the problem of internal corrosion in the wires.
There is an expensive means of repairing this with a much better and weather tight connector from a company/product line called Conxall. That and rebuilding your harness from scratch (new wires etc...). I am still acquiring spools of appropriately color-coded wires (man copper has gotten expensive as of late), no easy task for spools under 500 feet. The manufacturers don't want to talk to you for anything like that.
I will be building new harnesses in the coming year... stay tuned. To these ends I have been squirreling away dead harnesses for parts but I'm thinking for long term reliability, I may convert over to WeatherPac type connectors entirely.

 

hey robert

thanks for the tip on that mini media blaster. that thing is awesome.

 

I thought I was the only one crazy enough to media blast connections LOL!! I had to do a little welding on the bike a bit ago and removed all teh electronic peices just for peice of mind. Then glass beaded all the connections and blew them out and lubed and reassembled. It takes very very little blasting to clear away the corrosion. NOthing has failed so I must have gotton everything back together proper.

 

i dropped my whole wiring harness into an ultrasonic cleaner to get most of the gunk off of it. I thought that was kind of original.

 

Interesting idea, but it seems to me that that soaking it ultrasonically would only introduce water into tight areas (where it would be impossible to come out) on the harness connectors and would serve to induce corrosion later on in areas where you don't want it. For that reason alone I make it a point to avoid washing my bike unless I absolutely have to, along with not riding in the rain. It may look dirty, but it stays reliable.

 

depends on where your starting from.... this thing was filthy and when i got done with it, it looked factory fresh.

 

Ah... looked factory fresh. However, Brtsvg is right, you soaked your wire in a liquid and the conductor strands will wick the liquid up under the insulation, never to be removed. If you used a solvent such as alcohol, you should be ok. Water is a really bad friend in this application. I have used it but it was with the understanding that the harness would be replaced within a reasonable few years. Best bet is to use a mild solvent (alcohol is great for this) followed by a wipedown with WD-40 to remove the residue.
Best of luck to all in this continuing fight against aging wire.

 

Uh oh... Len has some competition now?

 

Bring it on!

Just kidding. I've had the harnesses quoted, using correct tracer-stripe GXL wire, and all the correct connectors blocks (they ain't cheap, either!), and it gets very expensive, very quickly.........they would have to retail for close to $250 to make the project worthwhile, and I'm just not too confident of the demand at that price..

 

Hey, all
For the piece of mind of a totally new harness, that actually doesn't sound bad to me, given the insane amount of time finding a short when the thing does start to fail!
;-)
Time is money?

 

Time is money! Len, if you are looking at having them made, I'd be willing to part with hardend yen to save me the time! $250 sounds like a deal, I'd spring for two at least.

 

UNLESS YOU USED AN ELECTROLYTIC CLEANER IN THE TANK OF THE ULTRASONIC, WHAT WILL HAPPEN IS WHATEVER LIQUID YOU USED WILL WICK UP UNDER THE INSULATION AND TRAVEL UP THE WIRE , THEN AS CURRENT FLOWS THRU THE WIRES, CORROSION IS GENERATED, YOUVE SEEN CAR BATTERY CABLES WHERE THE GREEN CORROSION GOES UP THE INSULATION OF THE CABLE FOR AN INCH OR SO... SAME THING.... PERHAPS YOU DRIED THE HARNESS IN THE OVEN AT ABOUT 150 OR 200 DEGREES FOR A FEW HOURS TO EVAPORATE THE CLEANING LIQUID OUT OF THE HARNESS WIRES ?

 

Hey Robert, thanks for the feedback. The Yen hasn't been doing too well lately (down almost 2% today against the dollar) so I'd have to insist on payment in US funds............so if they've been paying you in Japanese currency, you're due a raise.

But seriously, I haven't eliminated them from consideration, but it's a big nut to crack right now!