With the battery mounted to the bike, I’m now working to get all the electrics wired up.
First up was the left-hand handlebar switch, a super-cheapie unit I originally purchased seven or eight years ago for my CL125S resto-mod. The housing broke the first time I tightened the setscrew, so it got thrown in a drawer until I started on this bike. A little JB-Weld inside the housing fixed the original issue, so I thought I was good to go.
In keeping with its generic Chinesium construction, the switch’s wiring is downright wispy thin. Fortunately, an EE taught me a little trick: tin the wire, fold it back on itself, then tin it again. Then, solder it into the terminal fitting before you crimp it. That technique, along with a more-than-decent ratcheting crimper tool that a friend had recommended, allowed me terminate the skinny wires with suitably robust terminal connections.
So far so good. But once I’d wired up the turn signals, the left side worked, but the right side was dead. I immediately suspected my wiring, but methodical troubleshooting quickly isolated it to the switch assembly. Surprise, surprise. Well, maybe I could repair it? I removed the switch assembly (forcing me to cut off the hand grip first), and carefully opened it up — a process complicated by my earlier application of JB-Weld.
And? Negative, Ghost Rider. A circuit tester confirmed that the problem is a defect inside the switch mechanism itself. The flimsy unit was no longer worth any more time and effort. It went into the trash bin and another switch is on its way from Amazon. This one has an alloy housing, and I hope it will be somewhat better constructed.
