By passing the Ignition switch

There's been several times members here have by passed their ignition switch due to either switch failures or as a preventive to ward off failures. Today I decided to also do that to my bike and at the same time do a write up on it per a recent posting on this topic.

For those who wonder why this is needed or desired the ignition switch has the majority of the power going thru one wire to feed lights and ignition requirements. Needless to say the switches contacts take a beating over time caused by overheating & normal wear & tear. The accessory part of the switch seems to never have this type of failure so this does lend credence to overloading on the one line being feed.

By adding in a common 30 amp auto relay to that part of the circuit we can take the majority of the power off the switch before it gets there and route it directly to the line the switch powers, thus saving the switch.

You'll need a couple of short 14 gauge wires, push on terminals, shrink wrap, and a 30 amp auto relay to do the job plus a soldering gun and wire stripper.

To start you need to remove the drivers seat and gas tank. The gas tank is held on with a single bolt on the end by the seat plus two allen head bolts on the sides up front. Remove the cover by the ignition/gas cap. Disconnect the overflow vent hose and the fuel sender wires. The tank can be lifted off and set down out of the way now. Disconnect the (-) negative cable from the battery as you'll have one wire live otherwise.

On top of the engine locate the wire harness coming from the ignition switch. There will be two red plug connectors going through a holder. Pull those out. The one you'll be working on will be the 2 wire one with a pink plug on one end disconnect that plug. Picture 1 shows it well.

The next step is to splice a wire to the red wire with 14 gauge leaving it long enough to work with. Refer to picture 2

Cut the brown /blue wire leaving enough at the plug side to work with. Add a short length to both ends of the cut wire. Using a butt connector, soldered, and covered with shrink tubing will give a solid connection as well as protection . Add a female spade terminal to both of those ends. Do the same for the red wire spliced earlier too. Cover with shrink tubing after soldering them.

Make a ground wire with a eyelet end on one end and a female terminal on the other. See picture 3. I used the closest bolt holding the radiator fill cap in place to ground the eyelet. The opposite end will attach to the relay.

Connect the wires to the relay follows:

spliced Red wire fastens to #30 terminal of the relay

the brown /blue wire from the switch attaches to #86 terminal on the relay

the brown /blue wire going to the harness connects to#87 terminal on the relay

the gounding wire attaches to the #85 terminal on the relay. Wrap the wires up with tape and tuck them back into the harness holder.

Pics 4 & 5 show the completed job with the relay as tucked in on top of the engine.

Note: While this mod will prolong the life of the switch a long time there's always the posibilty that the switch can still fail through normal wear. If it does you can simply connect together the red wire and the brown/blue wire on the harness side to get you home. Some folks take this a step further and add a toggle switch between the two wires. I don't think it's neccassary on newer bikes but if you're experincing any ignition troubles now then I would certainly see the advatage of adding a toggle switch where you can get to it without having to remove the tank.