When I bought my 88 K100RS in August, the temp guage was not working and fairly soon after I noticed that the Oil warning light was not working.

The usual check of grounding the wire to both senders showed the temp guage to max and the oil pressure light on.

Sourced replacement senders from James Sherlock and fitted them a couple of weeks ago. Oil warning light went out as soon as the engine started and the Temp guage started moving as the engine warmed up.

Had a 150 mile run on Sunday and with ambient temp of 12c, the guage came up to the halfway mark. In stop start town traffic, the guage came up to one division below red and then the fan cut in.

Next one is to sort an intermittent electrical fault, which blows a 7.5 amp fuse, but only when on full left hand lock with the engine running. With the engine stopped the fuse does not blow. Checked some of the wiring and it needs the top part of the fairing off as some of the wiring is poor with taped twisted joints. Will solder all the joints and replace the tape with shrink sleeving, hopefully solving the problem.

MPG so far is 48.

Cheers

Bryan

Thye other way to solve the fuse blowing is to switch the engine off every time you turn left...makes sense to me....but I am from Australia.

Hi Bryan,
I would recommend crimped joints not soldered. On vehicles with any vibration soldered joints tend to break the wire where the solder stops. Crimped are much more reliable which is why they use them for aircraft connections.
Regards,
K-BIKE

If you have the proper crimping tool and not one of those squeeze and forget for a while till it goes O/C tools it is true but if not then solder is the most reliable.

K-BIKE wrote:Hi Bryan,
I would recommend crimped joints not soldered. On vehicles with any vibration soldered joints tend to break the wire where the solder stops. Crimped are much more reliable which is why they use them for aircraft connections.
Regards,
K-BIKE

I will have to invest in a decent Crimping tool as mine is a mickey mouse version. Soldered joints are not permitted on boats either due to a possible vibration issue.

There is no question the proper tool is great but even with the low cost hand crimping tools with a simple scissor joint it is possible to get a good crimp if you have reasonable strength. I used one of those for 30 years and had no problems on any of the many hundreds of crimps I made. Our Volvo has many of them what with the modifications and additions I have made over the 25+ years and not one of them have gone open circuit.

The only thing I do differently now when making crimps for motorcycles is to use a small spray of DeoxIT on the terminal so it makes its way into the bundle of crimped wire core. With spade type crimps it also helps the connection to the tab on the bottom of the relay or whatever it joins to.

Prior to getting onto using crimps I used to solder connections and had many fail due to vibration breaks. A friend who was doing an apprenticeship some 40 years ago at British European Airways (now BA) showed me crimps and explained how they had done a section of their training on how good crimps were. He showed me how to make them with the cheap scissor joint crimps and I changed over to crimps then and there.
Regards,
K-BIKE

Have now sorted my electrical problems and invested in a decent ratchet Crimper.

Unbolted the fairing and some of the wiring was a bit of a mess, which has now been replaced. My new ratchet Crimper was excellent, making good joints.

Electrical fault was due to a wire chaffing against the choke cable and the frame. Choke cable outer sheath had worn through, exposing the spiral wire. Have now replaced the choke cable and routed it correctly.

Hopefully will get the fairing back on tomorrow and am replacing any nuts and bolts with stainless ones.

Bryan

Always nice to hear of a positive outcome - well done BEEJAY

good result beejay ....congradulations

Well done BEEJAY!
Regards,
K-BIKE

Well done Beejay. Did you buy one of those complete stainless bolt kits? What's the consensus on them? Worth it?

88KE wrote:Well done Beejay. Did you buy one of those complete stainless bolt kits? What's the consensus on them? Worth it?

It was advertised on E-bay as a complete stainless set for K75/K100, with about 300 nuts, bolts, washers etc,. All the bolts are Allen key type and most of my fairing including the Belly pan, now have stainless bolts.For the price they were worth it.

For what you have used them for the stainless are a good choice. Some people go much further and replace other more critical load bearing bolts and ones that screw into alloy. I think it is a bad idea to change those over because the stainless is lower strength than the comparable steel bolts and lastly for the ones that screw into alloy the stainless steel/alloy junction is much more prone to electrolytic corrosion making them very difficult to remove. It is a very significant problem on boats and leads to the use of Monel where possible or some weird and wonderful anti corrosion pastes coated onto the stainless before screwing them together. Except where BEEJAY used them on the fairing I feel it is better to stick to the standard bolts .
Regards,
K-BIKE