1996 Kat 600F Wiring harness

[Bacarra]

Since this is almost a complete rebuild I am going to replace the wiring harness, but need suggestions.

Do I ebay an OEM one and hope it works? Go for an Aftermarket one? or throw down the $300+ for a brand new one?

The current one is spliced here and there and taped and cut and retaped. Not really trusting it.

Thanks for the suggestions.

[Wild-Bill]

Unless you're missing stuff or the connectors are chewed up I think I'd invest in some heat shrink tubing and a soldering iron. Fix your harness properly and call it good. If you get one off ebay there's no telling what's been done to it so you're inspecting/repairing it, too. Might as well stick with the evil you know.

[Bacarra]

Unless you're missing stuff or the connectors are chewed up I think I'd invest in some heat shrink tubing and a soldering iron. Fix your harness properly and call it good. If you get one off ebay there's no telling what's been done to it so you're inspecting/repairing it, too. Might as well stick with the evil you know.

Missing connectors no......at least I haven't found any missing at the moment, but I am not all the way through it. I do have random connectors just hanging and I know the front turn signals were NEVER connected. So I have to find those wires. So far the only thing I have off it is the gas tank and cleaned the carbs *well mostly where it starts now*, but I will prolly find more the deeper I get into it.

[Wild-Bill]

The front turn signals are a little bit of a pain to reconnect after putting the fairings back on. I could definitely see a PO slapping the fairings back on to sell it and not bothering to hook them up.

[Bacarra]

yeah. I should prolly do picture updates since this is going to be a long process, but well worth it.

[Wild-Bill]

The harness may not be nearly as bad as it looks. If the PO did a really crummy job of patching things then it'll at least be easy to find the spots needing repair.

If you're not experienced at soldering then it'd be worth it to do some reading up. The keys are to clean the wires down to shiny copper, use some flux to make the solder flow to the wires and avoid big, bulky joints. I'm a huge fan of heat shrink tubing for insulation. Use a hot air gun to shrink it and you don't have to deal with all the soot from a lighter.

If you're not familiar with it, look up how to do a "Western Union Splice". Very good in-line joint and pretty easy to do once you get the hang of it.

[Bacarra]

Thanks for the pointers. I will start reading

bacarra

[Wild-Bill]

Found this for you: http://www.mmxpress.com/technical/connections.htm
It's a pretty good discussion of some basic wire repair techniques. Note that they start by showing you the WRONG way to do it and end with a short discussion on crimp connections. I don't recommend crimp connections at all. They tend to fail. Moisture gets in between the wire strands, corrosion gets going and the joint gets hot. Sometimes hot enough to melt insulation, melt body panels and sometimes even start fires. That's what we call un-good.