Apes/Electrical Wiring Help

[HellanbacH13]

I have 13 apes on my 06 Vulcan 900 with 4 added to my clutch cable, brake cable, and throttle cables. my electrical wires are ok right now. i was thinking of adding 16 apes to my bike and putting the electrical wires in the new bars. how do i extend the electrical wires without having to cut and splice them. does anyone know if someone sells extenders. do anyone have pictures of wires internal where they meet the buttons.

[Occitiger]

I was told that the only way to get an extender was to make one, via a wrecked bike (this only works if your wires are long enough to get through the whole bar though)...

Other than that Im useless...

[RichLockyer]

Cut, splice, and run them internally. Looks WAY better. Trying to extend them results in the connectors being exposed on anything over 14" and looks bad.

These instructions are based on the Vulcan 1600, with 16" apes. Adjust the length of your extensions based on the rise of your bars.

On the Vulcan 1600, all handlebar wiring terminates on 4 connectors in the headlight bucket.
Remove the headlamp assembly and unplug the harnesses from the main harness. Two connectors come from each side, brake light, right side controls, and clutch safety and left side controls.

I used 20ga stranded wire. I would not go lighter than 20ga, as the headlamp circuit is on a 10amp fuse, which should be on 16-18ga conductors.

Before purchasing the wire, I wrote down ALL of the colors in the bundles. On the Vulcan, you’ll see wires like “red with white stripe and two silver dots”, etc….
I got rolls of wire to cover the basic colors, then got some red, black, and silver Sharpie markers. The markers allowed me to use white wire and make the red and black wires with white stripes, as well as add red stripes to the yellow and blue wires, plus the single and double silver dots used to allow the use of more than one of the "same" wire.
What I did was cut 20” lengths and used the wire colors and sharpies to make duplicates of every wire in the bundles. This allowed me to cut the wires without having to put markers on them… it made it a LOT easier to reassemble everything.

With the extensions ready, I started about 3” above the BOTTOM connectors. I did this to allow me to have enough wire coming out of the bars to resplice with everything on the bike.
Stagger your cuts. If you cut the harness at one spot, by the time you get done splicing, you’ll have a huge “bump” that will not fit through the holes in the bars. I staggered my cuts by about an inch and a half, maybe two inches, cutting higher and higher into the harness as I went. On the left side this put my last cut maybe 6” below the control box.

Now, starting at the control box, begin splicing the extensions onto the factory harness. Don’t place the wires side by side and twist them, that will result in a HUGE joint that could cause problems feeding into the bars. Instead, use a “Western Union”. This is where you place the stripped wires facing each other, then overlap the stripped part, and twist the bare wires around each other.

This results in a joint that is smaller than the insulation itself. Solder the connection and move on to the next.

After all of the joints are made, slip shrink tubing over the wires. I don’t like using tape, as it tends to unwind over time, and half of these splices will be inside the bars where you can’t get to them. If they become uncovered, they WILL short out against the bars. I used 3M 1/8” shrink tubing with an adhesive lining. When heated, the adhesive melts around the joint and provides water proofing, but standard 1/8” shrink tubing will do fine.
Don’t go crazy with the shrink tubing, you only want enough to cover about ¼” or less on each side of the splice, but keep in mind that it will shrink slightly in length as well, so if you think you need 1”, cut 1-1/4”.

Now is the fun part… feeding the wiring through the bars.
An easy way to do this is to take two pieces of string long enough to go all the way through the bars and use compressed air to blow them all the way through.
Now reach inside the holes at the housing mounts with a pick and pull the ends out. Use tape to anchor ONE string at each grip position (tug the string back and forth to make sure you haven’t taped both ends of the same string.)
If you have only one hole at the bottom center of your bars between the risers, reach inside the lower hole, grab both strings and pull them out.
If you have two holes on the outside of your risers, grab both strings on the right side hole and pull them out through the hole. This will leave you with one string in the left side hole, now reach in and pull it out.
Tape the free ends at the bottom of the bars.

Take the wire bundles from the control housings and using a very small amount of electrical tape, tape them together so there are no wire ends hanging. Since the cuts are staggered, you’ll need a fair length of tape, but don't let it get too thick. Just make sure that you don’t make any “blobs”, as they will not pull through the bars easily. Now tie the upper end of the strings to the end of the wire bundles. Secure the string with another small piece of tape.

Gently pull the strings from the bottom while carefully feeding the bundles in through the top. Be careful not to snag or strip the insulation as it goes through the holes at either end.

Once the harness is pulled through, you’re more than halfway there. Remount the control housings to the bars. The left side on the Vulcan is a pain, because the wiring has to pass next to the turn signal switch and it is a very tight fit, but it WILL fit, completely concealing all wires except for the clutch safety and brake light wires. I dressed these wires with some chrome mylar braid covered with clear shrink tubing before pulling the bundles through the bars, but I really think it would look fine with just a piece of black heat shrink tubing, and will do it that way if I tackle this project again, as the clear shrink tubing doesn’t look as good as I thought. Another option might be to run the wires through a short piece of scrap stainless brake hose if you have any in the junk box. That would look a lot better than what I did, just make sure the ends are treated so the stainless does not puncture the insulation anywhere.

Okay, now remove all of the tape from the wire bundles.
Some bikes (like the Vulcan 1600 and some HD models) have an upper fork cover behind the headlight. Sometimes, the wiring is run between this cover and the top triple tree. On the Vulcan 1600, there is not enough room there to pass the connectors for both sides. On other bikes, the wiring is run behind the tree, or in front of the tree but with no cover to block access.

Now is the time to decide how you want to “dress” the wires where they exit the bars. My Vulcan 1600 has an upper fork cover, so only a few inches of the wiring is exposed. I used the same treatment as I used on the brake and clutch wires. Again, plain black heat shrink will look okay, it all depends on the look you are after. I’ve heard of people buying stainless braided toilet plumbing hose from the hardware store and running the wires through that. The tricky part is coming up with a fitting for the ends that prevent the braid from fraying and looks good. Maybe some of the Russell fuel line fittings used on hot rods would work.

Now everything is beginning to take shape, and you are ready to reattach the connectors to the bottom end of the harnesses. This is where you’ll appreciate both the staggered cuts, and the time and money spent with the Sharpies and multiple rolls of wire.
Strip the ends, slip a piece of heat shrink over each wire, and begin splicing the same way you did on top. Did I mention to slip the heat shrink over the wire BEFORE soldering them together?
Tattoo this on the inside of your eyelids. I’ve seen more than one photo essay on this topic where the builder had a BIG cardboard sign on the wall of their shop or hanging on the toolbox “DON’T FORGET THE HEAT SHRINK!” It’s no fun to have to desolder a connection because you forgot.

Now that the connectors are on, you are ready to feed the harnesses back into the headlight bucket (or under the tank). You will have excess, just coil it neatly and secure with a couple of zip-ties so all exposed wiring is neat and clean. Remount the headlamp assembly and you’re ready to test the system.

While performing the following checks, in addition to watching for the desired effects, also look and smell for smoke for any kind of burning smell.
Now turn on the ignition, and check your parking lights. One by one, check the affected circuits… turn signals, brake light, horn. Tap the start button and make sure the headlight comes on with the engine. Check low and high beams, now test your kill switch.
NOW, pop the bike into gear and pull the kickstand up while sitting on the bike.
Quickly tap the start button and make sure that the starter does NOT kick in. This tests your clutch and kickstand safety switches (for bikes equipped!)
Now pull the clutch in and hit the starter again to make sure the engine does start in gear (important for when you stall it on the road).

If something doesn’t work, check and make sure that no fuses are blown. If they are, replace them and test again. If they blow again, then you have something shorted out. If they don’t blow again, then chances are you tapped something to ground during disassembly.

Here are some photos of my completed control housing showing the dressing of exposed wiring using the "chrome" mylar braid and clear shrink tubing.
http://personal.linkline.com/rlockyer/vulcan/apes/controls1.jpg
http://personal.linkline.com/rlockyer/vulcan/apes/controls2.jpg
http://personal.linkline.com/rlockyer/vulcan/apes/controls3.jpg
http://personal.linkline.com/rlockyer/vulcan/apes/controls4.jpg
http://personal.linkline.com/rlockyer/vulcan/apes/controls5.jpg

[RichLockyer]

Even if you DO get the harnesses from a wrecked bike, you'll still have to cut and splice, as you'll have to use the long pigtail from the control side of the harness and the short side from the headlight bucket to get the male and female connectors. These connectors will have to be spliced together.

There's 4 molex connectors, and one is about an inch by 3/4"... pretty big to be hanging outside the bars.