| Author | Message | ||
     Fritzferr |
Hey all, I have a redneck engineering "It's a Blast" chopper. I used the original wire harness, but for cleanliness sakes I decided to take the plunge and rewire the whole thing. I've purchased a ultima 18-533 harness and pulled the old one. My lack of harness knowledge is creating a steep learning curve as well as a lack of general support from Ultima. Probably my biggest two issues are the carb (needing power for the auto enricher) - should I replace it with a regular carb? And does the Ultima harness actually dispose of the need for fuses? My searches on the web haven't actually been fruitful in this area. As always, any thoughts would be great. | ||
| Missionbolts |
The auto-enrichener gets power whenever the ignition is also getting power. If the Ultima harness can handle the small increase in load for whatever wire is supplying power to the coil, you could just run an extra wire right off of the ignition coil positive. That would be a very short piece of wire, running in a very simple manner, with the least complications in routing Or, you could get a better carb. But that's extra cost just to save on a piece of wire. But a better carb couldn't hurt either The auto enrichener is a heated wax pot system. Nothing very sophisticated beyond the fact that the enrichener can be adjusted simply by screwing it in or out of the carb body You can treat it just like the electric choke on a 32/36 Weber, which I've wired directly to ignition coils many times with no issue As for fuses, that harness has a black box which I think might have circuit breakers instead of fuses. Some of the other Ultima kits are described as having circuit breakers inside the box. Their documentation is written as if a person would already know what they did, which I don't. - very badly written They may have done something interesting, like an electronic interrupt switch on each circuit that stops kicking-in when a fault is fixed I would also be a bit curious about how you are doing the speedometer. The Ultima kits do not seem to have any provision for the type of speedometer the Blast uses. Did you convert to a mechanical setup? The Blast speedometer uses a hall effect sensor mounted right above the engines drive pulley. It sends a 12 volt pulse to the speedometer on one of the wires going inside that unit. There's a microprocessor inside the speedometer which takes that & drives the indicator needle | ||
| Fritzferr |
Hey Mission, Thank you so much for the info! This way more than I've been able to sort out after a week of on and off searching. I'm probably always asking the wrong questions. You thoughts on the carb are very much appreciated. I'd rather not pay for a new carb and spend that money other items, but the possibility of manual choke intrigues me. But that's a bit ahead of me yet. I've got the wiring laid out on the bike and have attempted to try a few things to start testing. Here's the first video I'm making to kind of keep track, but editing isn't my forte'. I'll try to produce another one with the testing. There will be probably questions about that as well! https://youtu.be/an0qQXh0z98 | ||
| Missionbolts |
Cutting the old harness apart in order to reverse-engineer the wiring diagram is the hard way to do that project, but it's not the harness wires you want to be labeling. It's all the stuff that stays behind & connects to the new harness I would have kept the battery in with everything hooked up, then used the stock wiring diagram to double-check the pinout on anything I would be keeping. Things like handlebar switches, ignition switch, speed sensor I think the alternator is a two-wire style, not a three wire. But whichever it is, the stock regulator will have two or three input wires that are all the same, with a red & black output. That part of the project ought to be pretty simple to get sorted out The stock speedometer is really easy to re-wire, provided you know what each wire does. I messed with that one time and it was very straight-forward. There's a power & ground. That's two of the wires, and I recall that was simply a red & black just like a car stereo install. There's a special signal input from the speed sensor. And everything else just lights up various LED's when 12 volt positive is connected. Things like neutral indicator, turn signal indicator, high beam The speed sensor has three wires. Power, ground and signal output. I've had to replace mine, and I didn't care for how much those cosdt or how difficult it was just to find one. So I cut the old one apart and got the part number off of the hall effect sensor that was buried inside the plastic. Then I went and found a vastly superior hall effect sensor for $2 It was engineered for automotive use, so it has better protection from voltage spikes & radio noise, could auto-adapt to a wide range of magnet field strengths and had internal voltage regulation. I used a more sophisticated magnetic structure than what Buell had gone with, so the magnetic field would project further away from the tip of the sensor. That made it better at sensing the gear teeth on the tranny shaft Anyways, you can spot which wire on the speed sensor is battery hot by putting a test light on each pin while grounded to the frame. That requires the harness to be connected to the ignition switch and the battery, but nothing else would need to be connected. This would be a good moment to have the plug on the harness that goes to the speedometer in view and have the drive belt removed, or just be able to spin the rear wheel so the tranny output shaft can turn. You can find which of the two remaining speed sensor wires is ground by switching the test light clip to battery positive. Putting battery positive on the signal output without the speedometer should be pretty safe. But as the output signal is 12 volts and not 5 volts like everyone else does, then it shouldn't matter if the speedometer is still connected. The test light wont show anything on the signal pin, but should light up when connected to ground. Now you have the pinout on the speed sensor harness end. Cut that connector off the harness with enough wire to splice onto and label each one with what you found. That eliminates the speed sensor from the new harness install issues But, before cutting the connector, you should check the speedometer connector to see which pin has that speed signal Put the test light clip back on ground up at the front of the bike. With key on, probe each pin to see which one is hot. I'm fairly certain that will be a red wire. That supplies power to run the microprocessor inside the speedometer. That's how you get your odometer, trip meter and move the needle to show how fast your going While probing each of the remaining pins, except for the black wire (as I'm pretty sure that's just the ground), spin the tranny output shaft. You wont need to spin it very fast to get a good signal. It'll light up the test light just like a turn signal will, when you find the speed signal. I'm thinking it was a blue wire, but it's been a while since I went through all that You'll need to add some wires to that new harness in order to keep the electronic speed sensor connecting to the speedometer The lights will be the easiest part of the wiring. The light switches might need a little bit of testing and checking. Keep in mind that turn signals are normally always supplied with battery hot from the turn flasher. The handlebar switch is connecting to ground with the bulbs being in between the turn switch and ground | ||
| Fritzferr |
Mission, I can't believe what an excellent resource you are. I'll try to dig a bit further tonight. I've got the battery still in the bike and connected to the main/case ground. I've got the ultima ground to that same side and started with hot and testing a few lights, but hadn't gotten anywhere yet. I'll let you know progress and try to add video as I go. Thanks! Your memories are gold weight. | ||
| Fritzferr |
Hey Mission, I've posted my next video, https://youtu.be/7O-9eTHQGLQ, so you can kind of see where I'm at. As I mentioned before I'll keep your comments as a reference as I move farther along in the process, but right now I'm just struggling with the initial testing. I attached the harness to the battery and attached the wires to the front right turn indicator/light. I pressed the button and nothing happened. I went ahead and attached the ignition switch just in case that was needed to allow the current to flow and still nothing happened. So I'm missing something, but if I have time today I'll use a circuit test to see if I can sort out what I'm missing. Any thoughts? And thanks again. | ||
| Missionbolts |
Bulb in the turn signal lights up if you connect power directly to it? An old fashioned light bulb style test light will be good for things like this. But sometimes I like having a pair of leads with alligator clips. One to ground and the other on a wire end The wiring diagram that comes with the Ultima 18-533 does not show any ground wires in the harness, such as for the front right turn signal. And from the photos I see of the kit, it looks like they left all that out. If so, that will cause more problems You need to run ground wires to everything. You especially need to run a ground harness from the frame to everything up front. That can be a single large cable that splits into smaller wires where needed The horn, front & rear turn signals, tail light and headlight all need ground wires The ignition coil should have another small wire going to the ignition control module on the side of the engine. The coil gets power from the battery, which looks to be the Ultima wire marked for the coil. But the ignition control module is what triggers the coil, and that part was left off of the diagram I would hope the diagram is not showing what you actually got! | ||
| Fritzferr |
Hey Mission, I dug out a multimeter and did some quick tests today. And I wanted let you know that the harness comes with ground and is connected to the ground on the battery which is grounded to the case. I removed the key/ignition switch and connected the meter to the power and ignition wires and got the 18 volts. So power is passing through the harness controller! I then connected the power and ignition leads to simulate "on". I checked the end of the two indicator wires and got a power fluctuation that I assumed was the relay action. I connected those to the light indicators and pressed the light switch and got nothing! So either the light is burned out or the voltage is different? Tomorrow I will take your suggesting and connect power from the battery to the lights to confirm stuff. Thanks bunches as usual. Fritz | ||
| Missionbolts |
Well ok, cool that the diagram just didn't bother showing the ground wires, but they're there anyways! Each step forward is good news. Sounds like you're using that digital multitester to show the turn indicators are working. That would display a voltage that swings up & down on a turn signal that's working correctly. A test light with a standard bulb would be more fun, but it sounds like the Ultima controller is working fine on the turn signal wires Likely a bad bulb, or something weird with the socket that the bulb goes to You could do that same test on every other wire coming off the controller. Use the ground wires to check that they connect to the battery negative I think being able to see a test light lighting up is a lot more reassuring than watching numbers dancing around on a little LCD screen You could just use a loose turn signal with both wires hanging free off of it, as a test light. Just be sure to check that directly on the battery first! With my test light, I always check that the bulb is still working, before actually testing anything. There were a couple times I found that some corrosion had built up on the bulb's socket inside the tester. I eventually threw the socket away & just soldered the tester wires right to the bulb | ||
| Fritzferr |
Hey Mission, Well, the adventure got a bit more exciting! I attached a hot wire and ground from the battery directly to the to the two contacts for the right turn. I pressed the switch for the indicator and got a big spark on an old solder point that had gone weak! I switched the wires assuming that mattered and the light didn't light either time. But got a lot of smoke. So either the light bulb is bad or the switch is bad. That would go along way in explained my previous problems with that signal/indicator in the past. I'll try the two tests with the left side and see how far I get. Progress! Fritz | ||
| Missionbolts |
Ok, I'm not totally certain about where you're hooking up the battery, but it sorta sounds like you might have made a mistake!  At no time does the battery negative ever connect to the turn signal switch | ||
| Fritzferr |
Yeah, I'm pretty sure I made a mistake. That's good to know for the next test on the other side. Dang. Good catch. Fritz | ||
| Missionbolts |
Directly powering the turn signal lights would basically be done with the battery negative connected to the harness ground, or frame if the harness is securely grounded to the frame The battery positive will connect directly to a turn signal light From what I can make of this Ultima wiring diagram, it looks like they intend to have two separate turn signal switches? Has your bike been converted to what the Ultima diagram suggests, a push button on the left handlebar for the left turn & another button on the right handlebar for the right turn? Or, does your bike still have the stock Blast turn signal switch? If you are using the stock turn signal switch, then you only need one of the Ultima wires marked for 'Turn Power'. This wire will connect to the handlebar wiring as if it were the stock wire coming from a turn signal flasher. Then, the wires coming back out from the turn signal switch need to be disconnected from the turn signal lights, and connected to the Ultima box wires that are labelled for 'Left Switch' & 'Right Switch'. Your turn signal lights will be powered directly from the Ultima box wires labelled 'Left Front' 'Left Rear' 'Right Front' Right Rear' This means that you do not want your front & rear turn signal lights connected together on the harness wiring for any of the battery positive stuff But all the battery negative stuff, you should connect the front & rear lights to whatever frame grounds are easiest This style of wiring layout tends to favor having a frame ground somewhere close to the handlebars, maybe under the gas tank where it's out of sight. Everything on the handlebars or up front which needs to have a ground, should all be tied together in the front harness, with a single large ground wire on the frame, for a cleaner looking harness I think it would really be better if you test all four turn signal lights by themselves, one at a time directly off the battery. Actually, I would test anything that lights up, at this stage. Headlight, brake, tail light, instrument indicators. This would also be a good moment to double-check that the bike side wiring is labelled correctly Then proceed to connecting the turn signals right to the Ultima box The next thing I would do is test the Ultima box turn signal inputs while the box is powered up like normal. I would use the wire marked 'Turn Power', first testing it to see if it actually does have power, then connect it directly to the wires marked 'Left Switch' 'Right Switch' If that works, then I would connect the turn signal switch or switches and test those |
