Article By: Wayne At Wicked Willy’s Choppers www.wickedwillychoppers.com
Originally Published In The February 2012 Issue Of Cycle Source Magazine
We are now down to the end of our build, all parts are made and everything is done but the wiring. When I wire a bike from scratch, I try to use as little wire as I can, and I try to hide everything. The one thing I have learned over the years is someone can have one badass bike but it has wires showing everywhere. I use a five post starter relay, one 30 amp breaker, which is used for the charging system, and two 15 amp breakers, one for the lights and one for the ignition system. Also, I try to use 5 to 7 different color wires.
In this segment, I am not going to show you every little thing I do to wire Article By: Wayne At Wicked Willy’s Choppers www.wickedwillychoppers.com the bike but what I think a few helpful tips would be. Shown here in this picture, are the starter relay and the circuit breakers I used. This is the area under the seat that will never be seen. All I have to do is take my seat off and I can get to everything important in my wiring job. Also notice I use wire ties to bind my wires up.
I am going to show you how I make up my joints where I put my wires together. I will be working at the back of the trike hooking up my taillights. As you can see, I have three sets of wires in my hand. The first set is from my light breaker and it will be used for the taillights or as some call them, running lights. The second wire will be the one that comes off my pressure switch for my brakes. This will be used for my brake lights. The third is the ground wire. I like to run it back to the battery to get a true ground. Also, you will notice that I have all my wires covered in heat shrink tubing. This keeps everything neat and clean and also helps protect my wires.
Now comes the fun part. I try to cut my wires where I have very little slack. The reason for this is I can’t stand to see wires hanging down. As you can tell, it’s sometimes hard to get the wires twisted together so I can solder them. If you take your time and have patience, it will make for a nice clean job.
If you look close, you can see where I have twisted the wires together. Also note I try to keep my joints as small as I can so I can cover with heat shrink tubing after I solder.
Here is my joint up close after I have soldered. Notice I slide a piece of heat shrink over my wire before I soldered it. You have to be careful doing this. If you get the tubing hot it will shrink on you. Now I can slide it back over my joint to finish.
Once I have my heat shrink slid over my soldered joint, I use a heat gun to heat it up so it will shrink around my joint. I have seen some people use black electrical tape to do this but in time, the tape will give away. I have a bike that I wired over 12 years ago and the heat shrink still looks as good as this joint here that I have just done. Shown here, I am on to my next wires to be soldered. I am using a small, not very expensive propane torch and rosin core solder to solder my wires with. A solder iron is okay but it takes so much more time for it to heat up the wires.
Here’s how my wires look after I’m done. Notice how tight and neat everything fits up; nothing hanging down. Also, I used a double-sided tape wire tie bracket to stick to the back of the bed to help hold my taillight wires up.
While we are doing wiring, I want to show you how I solder a ring terminal on to a wire. First, I take a regular ring terminal and cut the plastic coating off. You can buy solder on terminals but I am cheap so I use the ones that are for crimping.
Next, I use my torch to heat up the terminal with the wire inside it. I keep my heat to the back of the terminal and let my solder melt in from the front side. This is actually called sweating it in.
Shown here is my ring terminal soldered to my wire. Notice how much neater it looks than using crimping pliers and crimping the terminal on. Also, by soldering your wires and terminals together, you will not have to worry about water getting into your joints and making problems down the road for you.
Next, I slide a piece of heat shrink tubing up on my wire and terminal. This gives it some insulation and helps protect it from the weather. Now I use my heat gun like before to heat up the tubing and shrink it around my wire and terminal.
Shown here is a nice and neat soldered ring terminal. I know I can’t show you everything about wiring a bike from scratch but I do hope what I have showed you in this segment of our build will help you on your next wiring job whether it’s to wire from scratch or to make repairs on your bike you ride now. If you have any questions about what we have done in this part that I can help you with, look me up on Facebook or call me at 828-303-0422.
