Well, after numerous trips, and 1,000s of km touring on my ST1300, a disturbing pattern was appearing concerning the reliability of various systems and components on the bike.
Waaay out in whoop whoop, I’d have some sort of failure that would require a work around, or merely not being able to use say, the spotlights, for the remainder of the trip. Or the level of noise coming through the helmet speakers due to a rubbing or shorting wire, or no heated grips on the coldest morning of a ride - you get the picture.
These problems can almost always be put down to:
a) Wear and tear
b) Shoddy bodgy or lazy workmanship; or
c) Cheap components from cutting corners in time and $$$
Let me say straight out - I am GUILTY of all 3! So generally I am only blaming myself for my freezing knuckles!
You also hear often of a workshop being guilty of one or more of the above as well.
Anyway - enough is enough - so I started planning a comprehensive fix for the systems that needed fixing, to become reliable and efficient.
The planning stage lead me to ask many questions, read many articles and watch many tutorial ‘how to’ vids on the internet.
Once armed with a considerable amount of knowledge, I went out to make the necessary purchases of QUALITY tools and components, and work my detailed plan.
The work I was to carry out was as follows:
- fit HID spotties
- clean up wiring looms
- add fuse block that runs off switched power
- add switches
- rewire or replace heated grips
- renew and re-oil K&N air filter
- lube side stand
- add side stand mod for HID ops
- remove OEM AM/FM radio
- rewire and re-switch 55W Halogen spotties
- add 3 relays
- wash all panels etc inside and out
- remove old Autocom system and extraneous wiring and plugs
This complements my recent Sena bluetooth comms setup purchase that has no wires from bike to rider.
And it caused me to do this to my ST1300.....
Waaay out in whoop whoop, I’d have some sort of failure that would require a work around, or merely not being able to use say, the spotlights, for the remainder of the trip. Or the level of noise coming through the helmet speakers due to a rubbing or shorting wire, or no heated grips on the coldest morning of a ride - you get the picture.
These problems can almost always be put down to:
a) Wear and tear
b) Shoddy bodgy or lazy workmanship; or
c) Cheap components from cutting corners in time and $$$
Let me say straight out - I am GUILTY of all 3! So generally I am only blaming myself for my freezing knuckles!
You also hear often of a workshop being guilty of one or more of the above as well.
Anyway - enough is enough - so I started planning a comprehensive fix for the systems that needed fixing, to become reliable and efficient.
The planning stage lead me to ask many questions, read many articles and watch many tutorial ‘how to’ vids on the internet.
Once armed with a considerable amount of knowledge, I went out to make the necessary purchases of QUALITY tools and components, and work my detailed plan.
The work I was to carry out was as follows:
- fit HID spotties
- clean up wiring looms
- add fuse block that runs off switched power
- add switches
- rewire or replace heated grips
- renew and re-oil K&N air filter
- lube side stand
- add side stand mod for HID ops
- remove OEM AM/FM radio
- rewire and re-switch 55W Halogen spotties
- add 3 relays
- wash all panels etc inside and out
- remove old Autocom system and extraneous wiring and plugs
This complements my recent Sena bluetooth comms setup purchase that has no wires from bike to rider.
And it caused me to do this to my ST1300.....
But I kept an eye on the widgets and clips using this handy schematic...
First task I attacked was to remove the air box cover to get to the air filter for a good scrub and re-oil. I used protective gloves to save scrubbing under fingernails for a lot of these pics....
A cleanup with some Aerostart to remove grime, and not leave any undesirable residue.
Re-oil the re-usable filter after a suds bath - and it is ready for another few thousand clicks.
And the wind screen tracks...
OK - time to start removing some of the spaghetti wiring crap and obsolete/redundant systems.
Like this AM/FM head...
The main box for this sits down in the LHS glove box rendering it virtually useless for carrying anything thicker than a deck of cards.
Things one can’t see from these pics are other abominations put together by “the shop” when items were added by the previous owner.
End of Part 1.
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