New Guy, New Dog (to me), and a Problem...

spadesluck

Active Member
I am proud new owner of a 2005 Chopper and the very little time I have had it, one week, has been very enjoyable for me. Now to the problem that I had.

I was getting ready to go for a ride and noticed my hand brake lights were not functioning but the foot brake was. After doing some research on the net and forums for potential problems I decided to get busy. I took the hand controls apart to find this,



The problem was pretty obvious. Those two white wires are supposed to be attached to the PCB. In the picture they are already stripped back from their shielding so that I could work with them. The wires must have broken off the PCB sometime while riding the bike because they did work when I first got it. Not a very comforting thought to know that your brake light was not coming on. Here is a picture of the board. Just to the left of the white connector is where the wires are supposed to be attached.



I took some of my own wire and re-soldered it through the board just like it came from the factory, probably better. Also during some further investigation I noticed some dry solder joints for the connector. I went ahead and hit those up with some heat and solder as well. That could have been a potential problem down the road for sure. This is what the board looked like after the new wire,



I next took some heat shrink and soldered the wires back to the switch on the hand lever.



Before reassembly I did a function check and all was good. So I reassembled everything else and was back in business. I hope that this could potentially help someone else out. Was not a hard job to do but was just a little time consuming. I did need the wife to come out and give me a hand a couple of times to hold something up for me. I hope this may help someone else down the road. Ride Safe, God Bless :D
 

kiwi

Active Member
thanks for taking the time for this how to , glad you are back on the road and having fun
 

pknowles

RETIRED
Good job on the repair,, not sure about where the flowers in the back ground go:roll::roll:It's Sunday and snowin-- gotta have some fun.
 

armad

Active Member
spadesluck What you have described here are cold solder joints. Usually a result of too little heat, someone in a hurry, or someone who doesn't know how to solder a pc board. Although you need to be careful applying heat to a pc board, you still need enough heat to produce a shiny solder joint. Good find and welcome to the pound.
 

spadesluck

Active Member
Good job on the repair,, not sure about where the flowers in the back ground go:roll::roll:It's Sunday and snowin-- gotta have some fun.
LOL, those are decorations that we had out for Christmas...or are they?

spadesluck What you have described here are cold solder joints. Usually a result of too little heat, someone in a hurry, or someone who doesn't know how to solder a pc board. Although you need to be careful applying heat to a pc board, you still need enough heat to produce a shiny solder joint. Good find and welcome to the pound.
Good catch, was a little tired when posting last night. All I did was reheat and touched up with a little bit of solder to get them looking good.

Thanks everyone for the kind words.
 

LARS

sippin & cruzin
Awesome post,and aren't wives supposed to "hold something up" for us quite frequently:cheers:
 
Top