Tuesday, October 01, 2013

Frump's Motorcycle Maintenance - It's never as easy as it should be part #1

Managed to put it off for a while, but finally tore the plastic and metal off around the tank on my GSA about 8 days ago. All necessitated by need to replace low beam H7 bulb with new 55 watt HID system.  My old 35W HID stopped working last spring (I think that's what happened anyways), so I had temporally switched back to a standard H7 until I had time to tear into it.  Within a couple weeks I started getting annoying LAMPF1 messages on the dash at random intervals accompanied by low beam failures.  I thought I had a bad bulb with a flaky filament.  With six lights on the front of the bike I didn't to concerned about it. 

A week ago Sunday, after mounting a new HID ballast, I got finally got in to twist the fixture cover off and pull the connector.  This is not an easy task for me, I have 3X American sized hands and apparently BMW designed this task for folks with small to medium sized European hands.  It always reminds me of the raccoon trap in the "Where the Red Fern Grows".  I got stuck a couple times, but managed to keep my cool without busting any parts on me or the bike.  Its hard to fully explain how much this sucks.

I found the low beam bulb connector had burned to the point where half of it had disappeared.  This is most likely, from what a I read, due to a large hands failing to connect the bulb snugly or just a loose connection.  What a mess.

H7 low-beam connector along with wire with insulation burned off.
Spade connector was previously embedded it connector which burned away.

Where is the right half if the connector?  I thought this was a y-soldered connection
but later figured out that is just insulation which burned off.

Last night I was able to get the headlight bucket off and figure out how to safely rewire the stupid thing.  BMW wanted $48 for a new H7 connector, but I found a pair of better ceramic ones online for $7 plus $7 shipping, Nuts. I had to disconnect and re-route my auxiliary plug wiring because it was tangled into the HID wiring and could not remove the bucket with it tangled as such.

I'm hopefully I'll have everything done in time to prepare for the Harvest Rally this weekend.  I hope to have time to get everything reconnected tonight and test it, but busy at work too.


The other side, the high beam H7 connector.
Took this to remember wiring colors, but notice both halves
of $51 BMW connector.  I believe discoloration on the
socket is from heat of HID.

Torn down to make space for my 3x hands

Sticking screws into cardboard and marking where they go is a great trick -
Thanks Chuck!