The wonderful world of wiring

During the run up I had noticed that I had some rather funky goings on with my indicators.

My fronts were permanently on only going out when that sides indicator was selected and the rears were flashing on the wrong sides. that was if they worked at all as they were pretty intermittent.

As I was stripping down the bike I took a look at the wiring under the tail unit. All the wiring was connected up correctly yet I was still getting a back to front indication. 

I disassembled all the connections A took the time to polish the little brass connectors to reduce resistance in the system and put it all back together again. I tried swapping the wiring round, leaving the common earth as it is and swapping the live wires. Success!  Everything worked as it should but why only when the wiring was plugged in incorrectly?

 This was baffling for 10 seconds longer than it aught to be when I realized the indicators had just been installed on the wrong sides by the importer. So I swapped them over and wiring harmony was restored.

Now for the fronts. I already had a theory that the indicators remaining on was something to do with it being an import. I knew that American vehicles had their indicators on all the time as running lights and that other countries did the same. The wiring looked good again. All the colours were right and there was no other connections apparent. I was starting to wonder if the flasher relay might be playing up but couldn't understand why this was only effecting the front. I then noticed another wire tucked up inside the insulation on the bike side. I pulled it out to find a male connector with a little black rubber boot on it. This didn't seem very useful as the indicator side connector was also male and a slightly different colour wire meant it wasn't supposed to be wired up that way either. With a lack of options I tried touching these connections together expecting the inevitable puff of smoke from the fuse box but was greeted with a flashing indicator.

 I polished these connections up and tie wrapped them together on both sides for the time being.
A visit to eBay and a few days later I had some Japanese bullet connectors and insulation jackets. These tuned out to be a touch bigger than those used by Honda so I had to cut off both male connectors on the coloured wires (the green earth was left as it is) and new connections were added.

I think the reason the wiring on the indicators did not match the bike is that they were UK spec indicators that the importer had bought (I remember him saying the bike had an aftermarket fairing on it when he imported it) and quite clearly not tested.
In the end it was a fairly simple answer to that problem and thankfully inexpensive. the intermittent flashing had been solved by cleaning up the connections in the process of all the other rectification so this little wiring issue is completely closed now. Doesn't look bad either.

Whilst I was playing with electricery I changed the rear light bulbs as one was a very melted led thing and the other was rather different looking and something I was not sad to remove. Anyway you can always tell when bulbs aren't matching and for the sake of a couple of quid that shotgun glow is worth it.