Topic: 1976 CB500/550 Project "Squirrel"

[RAFster122s]

Aspirin will kill a cat, wonder if it does the same to a squirrel, crush it and mix it in with the peanut butter.

[riverfever]

Here's where things are as of Friday night when I realized I needed more wire in a few colors. Should be here Wednesday or Thursday but it'll be Friday before I can do anything with it. Should have the front end done by next weekend though.

[Stev-o]

Time for an extended stay at Betty Ford for you- 

+1 Sounds like he's gettin cabin fever up there! Must be the meds....

[RAFster122s]

Got a nice seat on that electrical explosion of wires.
looks like you didn't skimp on the green wire from the coils of it lying about. Sincne it is a ground would it make sense to run a large "backbone" ground rail to tie all those grounds coming from various areas on controls and other components where needed and tie that ground rail into a couple good points on the frame and ultimately the battery?
Ground is ground on most circuits unless you are pulling a relay remotely and sending many amps to a component you only need sufficient ground wires from a circuit to a good ground for the bike. Looks like you might be running ground wires back to Munit.
I see at least 2 or 3 green wire runs.

Controls and handle bars and their paraphenalia ?sp? Look great.

David

[riverfever]

The majority of those green wires you see on the left side there are 5 that come off the tach. But from up front I think I probably have 13 or so ground wires in all. Once I have them all routed they will split on each side of the backbone and come together in one ring terminal on each side and then ground at the frame (underneath each P clamp). The reason it looks a mess right now is because I had to order black, brown, and red wire in 22awg to finish extending the wires for the M Lock and the tach and speedo. Once that's done, I can end the sleeving for all the 7 or so looms I have now, deal with the grounds, then create more condensed looms (sleeving and heat shrink) and continue on to the M Unit.

[540nova]

My ground wire solution.


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[SOHC4 Cafe Racer Fan]

Just a little bit of overkill, but very tidy.

[RAFster122s]

540nova,  tapatalk doesn't play nice with devices that don't have tapatalk...for me at least > on your posted images.

David

[540nova]

I consolidated most of my grounds from the headlight bucket into a Molex connector, then used a jumper to connect them all in the outgoing half of the connector, and ran a single ground wire to a fabricated ground bus atop the coils.


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[GV1390]

My ground wire solution.


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Looks very nice! I bet Cal would approve....but only if it contained ARP hardware! haha.

[540nova]

My ground wire solution.


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Looks very nice! I bet Cal would approve....but only if it contained ARP hardware! haha.

Thanks! I do have some ARP on the bike, notably on the headlight ears.


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[riverfever]

Got to work on things a bit tonight but I really thought I was going to get more done. Ran out of sleeving so I'll have to order more and it'll be next weekend before I can do anything else. Got the gauges all wired up and routed, one of the coils (although I used 18awg and may switch to 22 just to keep things tidy), the M Lock, and the horn re-wired in a loom with the M Lock. Soon as I get more sleeving I'll be able to install the headlight bucket, get the headlight wires and both turn signals in a loom and then get everything run down the rest of the backbone and to the M Unit. Here's some pics.

[BLAC]

Looking good! The thought of having to wire my bike one day makes me want to scrap the whole thing... but you guys are making it look easy

[SOHC4 Cafe Racer Fan]

Now that you are one of Cal's Motogadget Acolytes, you will be dispatched far and wide to help others.

[RAFster122s]

My ground wire solution.


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540Nova,

Finally saw your images...  Do I see black and green wires being terminated on your ground bar solution?  Guess you deviated from Honda's selection of green being ground and black being switched power.
Looks nice though, good solution.  David

[540nova]

My ground wire solution.


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540Nova,

Finally saw your images...  Do I see black and green wires being terminated on your ground bar solution?  Guess you deviated from Honda's selection of green being ground and black being switched power.
Looks nice though, good solution.  David

I have all aftermarket controls, and all custom wired throughout the bike, so Honda colors don't apply. I used the same color off the new switches and controls back to the M-unit or ground, regardless of the original scheme. Of course I had to make a reference sheet with Molex shell numbers and new colors, for future troubleshooting.


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[riverfever]

I had several days of failure with the live trap but then I came home the other night and when I pulled into the driveway I could see the trap doors were shut. The trap was not where I had set it on the deck but I didn't get too excited because the little bugger had beaten this trap three times as well. As I got out of my Jeep, I could hear the sound of claws on the metal and I knew I had something. It was a squirrel.

He was huge and I think the blood tests (he had bled from trying to chew through the trap) will confirm that he is mutant and part wolverine. He had moved the trap several feet and he barely fit in the darn thing. So, at that point, I was trying to figure out what to do with it. Now Cal will say that I am a candy ass and, while that may be true, I was still in a similar situation that I had been in. I wasn't going to use my pistol to shoot it while it was in the cage and I wasn't going to let it go and pop off shots at it while it ran away. I didn't wanna stab it through the cage and I really didn't wanna deal with filling a cooler with water and drowning the fawker (it's damn cold up here right now) and the less time I had to spend outside with it, the better). So...I put the cage in the back of the Jeep and drove to a trailhead on the other side of town (several miles away) and walked it into the woods, opened the door and he took off. Hopefully it won't pull a "Homeward Bound" and chew a hole through the house and kill me in my sleep. Yesterday I did get home to see fresh squirrel tracks in the snow on the driveway but none on the deck and this squirrel was up there every day so I'm confident it was the one I wanted. We'll see what happens when I order yet another set of cushions and a furniture cover. 

[SOHC4 Cafe Racer Fan]

I bet part of you wondered as you opened the cage that the Wolverrel would leap from the ground and try to chew off your face. 

Catch and release!  See if you can land a bigger one!

[riverfever]

There was a part of me that wondered if it was going to be a bad idea.

[seanbarney41]

Have had lots of squirrel problems over the years and always solved them same way you did...the figure I was given by the local nature center was at least five miles or they will be back.  Squirrels have always headed for the hills as soon as the trap was opened...baby raccoons?, thats different...they waddle out and want to snuggle up

[riverfever]

Five miles is pretty unreal! I never would have guessed they could do that. There has always been mountain lions in and around my town but right now we believe we have several (one is a female with 2 kittens) that are hanging out in town (even close to the main street businesses) because of all the deer that we have here. Some people are freaking out because they have been hiding under decks or dragging kills there. Apparently one of them seems to be not at all bothered by humans driving up to it and shouting at it. I know they can typically have a wide range of travel but these have been here for months now. Each night I make a little loop through town where recent spottings have been but I know it's just gonna be freak if I happen to spot one of them. It's the one animal (as well as Lynx) that I haven't been lucky enough to see in person out here. DOW is now setting up traps for them so they can be relocated. Animals amaze me sometimes.

[SOHC4 Cafe Racer Fan]

Don't suspect for a moment that a public confession will absolve you of the humiliation I threatened.

Please lower your trousers and grab the rail, assuming the position . . .

And do be a good sport and count off the strokes, will ya? 

I feared this was going to go into a Deliverance direction.

[riverfever]

I feared this was going to go into a Deliverance direction.

 

Hahaha!! I got a text originally from Cal and all it said was, "Well!!??"

I was going to tell him that I bit it's head off but I figured he'd know better.

[riverfever]

Ok everyone I need some help/ideas. While I'm waiting for more sleeving and wire to get here I decided to revisit where the rear turn signals will mount. Originally I wanted them to mount on the grab bar about 1 1/4" back from the mounting point to where the grab bar mounts to the frame. The plan was going to be to run the wires internally forward, out a small hole and then along the frame. I was going to drill a larger hole on the inside of the grab bar so that the mounting nut would be hidden inside but the hole size required to get the nut inside the grab bar is too big and will weaken the grab bar too much. The threads on the turn signal are not long enough to go through the bar either.




So now the idea is to make some aluminum tabs to mount underneath where the grab bar mounts to the frame and then mount the turns to this tab. The tabs would need to hang down about an inch below the frame and then I could run the wires up the inside of the frame.





Anyone have any better ideas?

[palepainter]

Do you have a photo of the mounting sleeve on the turnsignal?  And is the threaded portion of signal removable.