i feel dumb and beaten

Energy One

wyopsycho

Active Member
well I woke up this morning and it was a beautiful day. (for Wyoming)
all day I was thinking and planning on working on my dog. stuff I been putting off all winter. so I hurried as much as I could today at work. I got home had my son drive me down to storage. got the bike out it fired right up woohoo.
drove it up to the house. first lets search the forums and see how to do this. pretty straight forward. changing out the struts from stock to sissy bar accepting ones. Have a bad tail light I need to change out also. so I pulled the seat off found the plug for the tail lights unplugged that. on a side note it amazes me that four bolts support my wife bouncing up and down the road. so back to it I unbolted the struts had my son holding one side of it. brought the whole fender and strut combo inside and set it on my bed up side down so I could get to the bolts. I had to cut the wires to the tail lights in order to get the housings off the struts (design flaw) so opened the box with the new struts and they have goo on them MISSY come and clean them.
so wife gets them cleaned up. she denies it but I think she used soft scrub on part of it took me an hour to polish the scratches out of the one part of it.
get soldering iron out and shrink tubing cut to length. get struts switched over get wire ran thru get it all wired up get it all tightened up.
son and I go out to bolt it all back together. used blue lok tite on all of it.
so we get it bolted on plug in tail lights, Bolton sissy bar. turn on key.
the damn tail lights are amber so now I'm pissed I go inside to my ebay check ad sure enough they say red damn damn damn. i'll contact them in a minute I'm sure its all good.
so blinker cause that's what was burned out on the set I removed. I turn on right blinker and left blinks
I turn on left and right blinks, are you &*&^%&* kidding me. I switched sides when I was replacing struts. I do not want to pull it back apart damn it damn it.
 

johnle712

Active Member
you dont have to pull it apart. there are two wire: violet and brown ( i think). that are your left and right signal. just cut them near the connector and switch it. violet to brown and vice versa.
 
Also you shouldn't have to cut wires to remove them. You just need to pull the pins out of the jst harness. It is a pita to do and be careful as the wires will break. I did something similar even with the schematic ! But I tested them before reassembling .
 

wyopsycho

Active Member
damn I never even thought of removing the pins

and thank you for the brown and violet I just figured I would just not use my blinkers lol
 

BWG56

Guru
You could have just removed one bolt each side and changed the struts without removing fender by just pivoting it up to access the strut to fender screws.

 

liferider

Looking forward to retirement
My problem was when I did my struts the wires were slightly sticky puddled to the fender going back to the harness. Sure enough a month later they fell on the tire and shorted out. I went back removed the rear fender and using a drimal tool nearly cut a path for the wires to sit in. And roughed up the area around it then I bonded the wires to the fender. Now there protected and will not drop down on the tire again!
 

BWG56

Guru
My 07' struts had a groove for the wire and the wires were between the fender and strut, hidden.
 

bearman

Active Member
I had to cut and re-solder the wires on my ’06 Mastiff also when I replaced my struts. Well, I really just un-soldered the existing connections. I don’t know if the connections on mine were factory or someone had re-done them before but it was the worst soldering job I have ever seen. They were so bad that I don’t know how any voltage passed through them.

Good thing you did yours on the bed, I did mine on a piece of cardboard on the table and now I have a bunch of tiny scratches on the rear fender, but at least the 2-up seat covers them.

The JST connectors are the easiest of any connectors to remove and replace pins. The only special tools needed is small needle nose pliers to pull the lock out. google or youtube it.
 
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