Double Darkside completed!! (but not without drama)

smokey2255 wrote:Congrats on getting it all done yourself, nothing like an adventure like that to get intimately familiar with your scoot.

See you out there
Smokey

tomkat100 wrote:I mounted the Avon 150/70/17 on the front of my 1300 R 2 weekends ago. I'd never changed a tire before and it was really satisfying to do it myself. Had to order the tire spoons off the internet, 'cause no auto parts store around here carried them in stock. Anyway, got the thing mounted and aired up, lowered the bike down from the jack, got ready to take a little ride and.....pop....blew a fuse when I turned the key on. I replaced the fuse, turned on the key....pop...blew another one. Of course, I'm thinking, "What the hell did I break while I was changing the tire?" No wiring under the front fender, so it couldn't have been anything there. The only place I could have done any damage was where the jack hits the frame under the bike. Got under there to take a look.... nothing. There are no wires that could have been interfered with by the jack. It slowly dawned on me that the tire change and the electrical short weren't related.

That's when the saga began. I spent 8 hours each on 2 consecutive days, pushing wires, pulling wires, disassembling and reassembling every electric accessory I've added to the bike, and that's a lot. I posted an "SOS" on the Cafe, and had a lot of good input, suggestions, techniques and sympathy. I finally accepted the reality that the rear tire had to come off to give me access to the wiring under the rear fender. Thought it might be a rubbing issue. Took the tire off and FINALLY found the short.

I had added lights to my hardbags and to get the wiring to the bag on the opposite side of the factory wiring, I had fabricated a bracket to the underside of the fender. Evidently, one of the hot wires had frayed and made contact with the fender. By then, of course, I had taken off every wire splice, every connection that I'd even touched in the past couple of years, not to mention blowing at least 25 10A fuses. For a while there, it seemed that my best options were to either burn the bike or kill myself. Put it all back together (MUCH better insulated!!) and re-mounted the rear tire. If I hadn't already put that tire on once myself, I would have sworn that it wouldn't fit....lots of Joy liquid and swearing. (That may sound sexy, but believe me....it wasn't).

Got all of the wiring back in place last night (did I mention that somewhere in this whole ordeal, I broke a turn indicator? The ##*$@^# one that Kuryakyn doesn't even make anymore?......thank you JB Weld), got the bike back on the ground and actually was able to pull my car back into the garage for the 1st time in days.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot that the point of this post was to report on the new "darkside" front tire. Got to take it out for a short ride tonight... wonderful change in the curves. Very stable, very comfortable. I mounted it with the indicated rotation.

The moral to the story may be that persistance makes up for a lack of IQ points (at least in my case).. Happy Thanksgiving to everyone