Part A of the trailer install/addition left me with a hitch installed and the required harness in limbo somewhere in the mail system between here, (Rockhampton) and Victoria. The delay was probably due to that US knobheads war in Iran that caused a spike in diesel prices. Anyway, I was in the situation of having a tow hitch installed, but needed a wiring harness. The wiring you can see in this photo is the Canadian one, which uses a BUS system, sort of like a USB, multi signals can travel back and forth. It has four wires, my trailer has a 7 pin standard flat plug of which it uses 5 wires. As it turns out, I cannot connect my wiring on the trailer to the Spyder directly because it will cause an electrical issue and bugger the ECU of the Spyder!! Bugger. If I had known that, or done a bit more research, I would not have bought from overseas where I did. But, this is a mistake I made, so anyone else in Australia does not have to.
The solution is to find a harness that can sit between the 4 wire BUS of the Spyder and the 5 wire standard wiring of the trailer. I finally received the harness I needed last week, 3 weeks in the mail from Victoria via Australia Post, goodonya wankers, 1,400kms in 3 weeks, I did 1,700kms in one day on the old Vstrom. Anyway, once I read the instructions for installation, and got over the shock, I headed downstairs to suss out the situation. No easy way out of just pulling some plugs apart and inserting a new one, I had to totally strip the panels off the left hand side of the Spyder and run a power lead from the battery, which is right up the front, to a connector under the passenger seat, which is way down back!!! But, I was mentally fine with the procedure. Don’t forget I had stripped my Vstrom down many times, and this was just a new learning curve for an old dog.
Just for the record, when I dropped the main side panel, a mud hornet nest fell loose, that is it ringed in red above. It was quite big, about the size of your palm, and now I knew why that big bastard was always heading up and under the side panels as it cruised past my ear on the way in. I ended up spraying it with toxins from that blue can, as it came in for another landing. It was pretty quick though, so I am not sure I hit it.
Anyway, the main wire I needed to run, had a fuse attached at one end and the other end of the wire had a bullet connector. I had bought this harness from Henri at 59Rust, https://59rust.square.site/ he was very available when I called him. The reason I called him being, do I run the wire from the back to the front or vice versa. The answer is to run it from the front to the back. Mainly because it is easier to push a bullet connector tipped wire through small holes than the double wire with fuse block as shown below, that end connects to the battery!
There is basically only one way to go, from the battery compartment at the bottom of the front trunk, head back past the positive terminal area upwards and come out high and out towards the front left wheel, it is an open path, then cable tie to the original wiring harness which goes towards the fuse box. This will keep the cable up and out of the way of any steering and suspension parts.
Then head along the main harness towards the rear, I went underneath the edge of the fuel tank, no chance of being touched there. And it is a long way away from the moving parts of the drive belt.
There is a seat strut to the rear of the tank, I went inside that. In that area were some rounded edged frame sections, I just tied to them. Keeping in mind I needed to bring the end of the cable out amongst the main harness connector under the seat. It was pretty easy really. I connected the power wire(orange) to the harness adaptor orange wire, then coiled the extra length and tucked it into the access space hole under the seat.
It was during this stage of the install, a day or so later, that I noticed there were mud wasp nests inside the airbox intake, I guess they got pissed off when I removed the last nest and all the handy hidey panels. . I scooped them out and shoved a rag in there to block them. I am gonna need more DTD methinks! Anyway, this should stop them overnight until I can find some screen material.
OK, I am nearly there. There is an earth wire which is part of the adapter harness, but it is white! Weird, cos being an ex technician, earth is usally black or green! This install needs a chassis earth. Out with the meter(multimeter, checks voltage and resistance etc). The chassis bolts under the seat that hold the rear plastic fairing to the frame are too thick for the supplied fitting on the cable. I found that most of the stuff under and around there was plastic. I eventually found a good earth in the fuel tank. I ran the white wire back along the just fitted orange wire(power), and bolted it firmly to the tank mounting bracket.
Job done right! Nah, nah. More to do. I need to mount the trailer socket. And before that, I needed to mount the socket on the end of the cable, which had been dropped down under the left pannier, you can see it 3 pictures up just a dangling.
Easy peasy, it is all colour coded, the ends of each the harness wires had been soldered, you only need a small screwdriver to lock the wires in, nice job Henri 🙂 Once the socket is all complete and sealed, it is screwed to the underneath of the left hand pannier, at the rear of course. You can sort of see the connector a little bit below the April in the next shot, it is a small black oblong thingy.
It has a spring loaded cap, so it is mostly weatherproof when not being used. The rest of the excess cable is cable tied to some plastic projections under the panniers. I just had to drill a few holes, nothing to see here. For the record, the actual pannier space(internal useful space) ends about 100mm from where I placed those mounting screws. No lost integrity as it was all blank area. Nearly finished now, but I needed to fix the wasp nest issue. The Spyder is left under cover but open all day, so in the end, as I could not find any fly screen or equivalent, like shade cloth, I ended up cutting a small corner off of some of my bird netting. It did the job.
Easy to cable tie in place and peace of mind. It won’t be seen as it is behind all the fairings, which now had to go back on. Of course, I left that for another day, mainly because I had had a few beers by now and there was no point breaking things with frustration. 🙂
So the next day I attempted the reassembly of the panels and I was impressed by the lack of swear words used, while it all went back together 🙂 This was of course AFTER, I had connected the new orange power lead to the battery, and connected the trailer connector and made absolutely positive that it was all working as it should! And then I went for a test ride.
It was a bit of an effort, but after 8 months, the trailer was ready to be road tested. TBC