Morgan Territories run to Jaguar E Type!!
Rode the long way to work via the Morgan Territories loop. Which is always gorgeous.
Got some fuel and then stopped in Clayton’s cute downtown and got a cup of coffee to start the day. It was a beautiful day out and nice to sip the coffee seated outside. Needed a coffee after several margaritas late last night.
And then I got to drive my favorite car again – a 1964 Jaguar E Type convertible (XK-E). Wow is that car sweet!
Amazing. Gorgeous. Sexy, brutally fast. (60s metric)
Posted in Uncategorized by green
Had to rig up 12V hot to power headlight out. Ride home at dark.
Headlight still kerfluey. I lost the high beam about 7-8 weeks ago, but the low beam had been working. Now back to the bike, both my headlights are out and rode to work as I wasn’t expecting to work after dark, but I did.
Put in replacement headlight early in day at work and the new known working bulb did not work on high or low beam. Shit. Not good.
Disassembled the left handgrip. All contacts look very good. No trouble spotted there at all.
Then I lost the small ball bearing into the bike somewhere. Grrr. Whatever. No biggie.
Here’s where it gets interesting:
Mechanic I worked w yesterday (I was living the dream – rocketing around a 1964 jaguar E Type!!!)
Had some crazy tool. Electrical type. Never seen one before. Not a multimeter. (It was a power probe).
Anyway he attached one lead directly to my battery post and then could instantly test all the circuits by touching each the top of each fuse WITH ignition off and activate each circuit!
So he told me my replacement headlight worked fine. We saw it light up.
Then he probed the 3 way switch handle grip headlight at the solder points individually and could then tell me the white/red lead was low beam one of other was high beam as they each activated the light.
He said I should just wire a 12V hot wire to either solder point. Actually he wanted me to cut the wire and twist a new lead together. He had done a 13hr day w me and had to go then.
So I decided to dumpster dive their dumpster and easily found a bunch of old scrap wiring. I cut up a lead and wrapped it around the solder post of the handgrip switch lo beam and reused some electrical tape to try to insulate it.
Used the 12V ACC connection that comes from under the seat that I had rigged up a connection to by the front gauges to a cigarette lighter adaptor that I used for moto camping to power GPS, my iPhone, and Nikon batteries if needed.
So I unplugged that connector and jammed the lead into the long vertical lead and voila! Low headlight!
Mechanic said for some reason the handle grip switch is NOT getting 12VDC power and that’s my headlight issue.
So would this be an ignition key / area contact / wire that is suspect?
Biked after dark after driving E Type w the crazy wiring at 80-85mph on highway and she worked great for 40 miles! But only temporary solution and I have to manually plug / unplug wire for headlight as the ACC circuit is always hot even without the key in and bike off.
Posted in repair by green
Just re-wired the charging system. 2nd Regulator / rectifier unit replacement
I’ve had charging issues with Green Magic. Recall that was the first major problem of this bike, it would eat batteries.
I’ve cut out crispy wires and trimmed back charred wires that hook into the regulator / rectifier unit now twice. Both times I got some good life out of the charging unit – the first time I swapped in a low mileage ZR7S R/R unit.
The second repair job last year I cut back the wires again, but I knew it was only a matter of time…
The final day I was out west again, the bike was not charging riding and about to die soon I could easily tell. I throttled the bike at high rpms back home. And parked it and drove the van that day and flew east the next day.
6 weeks later I got back to the bike and took of the rear left panel, expecting to see fried wires at the R/R again. Which I did find. BUT, this time I also found a melted stator to regulator wires connector. That’s new and bad.
So I rounded up some new wire connectors and cut up some brand new THHN stranded 10 gauge wire and ran them from the stator connection all the way to the R/R and put new connectors into the plastic 6 pin clip there as well.
I cut back the 3 yellow stator wires a little bit and put on new connectors there and connected to the new 10 gauge wires.
I also installed a low miles ZR7S R/R unit, the same Shindegen Shunt unit from a different Kawasaki. I found it on fleabay for $13 shipped and couldn’t say no to that!
Result? Green Magic fired up (Although grumpily after sitting for 6 weeks with a weak battery. I had to push it up the hill to the crest and then bump start it down the hill after 3 sessions of trying to battery start.)
It ran rough for several minutes, but when it warmed up it ran strong and great!
A few days later I took it on a 80 mile run and it was great. I hope this solves the charging issues for a long time!
Posted in repair, Uncategorized and tagged Kawasaki, Ninja, regulator, ZX-6, Zx6e, zzr, zzr600 by green