Replacing the intermittent bulb holder and checking the dimensions of that rear speedo screw.

Replacing the intermittent bulb holder.

Right, as mentioned earlier someone pulled out some wires from under my speedometer a few months back while the bike was parked, probably searching for particular wires to steal the bike. Anyway, as we saw I repaired the one broken ring clip on the one wire but was missing one of the screws to make my fuel gauge work, which got pulled out. I also developed an intermittent fuel gauge light as the one wire had got pulled from the rubber holder. Well, seeing as I was in no rush to illuminate a fuel gauge at night that wasn't working anyway, I hadn't gotten around to fitting the replacement T10 bulb holder mentioned before, as there was no real point!

However, as I need to measure the screw needed to be replaced (or it wont ever be fixed), as Lexmoto doesn't stock it as a replacement part. And need to take the speedo back off to do this, I may as well swap the bulb holder for the new one at the same time. Now of course I will have to remove one of the other 'same' screws and measure that one.

Were basically just cutting off the old rubber bulb holder as close to the holder as possible to give us more wire to play with. You could trim the wire down on the new holder if you want but, I'm leaving it at full length as there is nothing under there (speedo) anyway, it's not exactly tight for space. And should you ever need to to re-trim and re-join in future there is plenty left to do so. 

We remove some insulation and expose the copper wire on all the wires we are going to join. Not too much, about as much as I have done. Firstly we are going to turn on the riding light so the speedometer also lights up. We won't use much power with the riding light but,will with the headlight without the engine running! With the speedo on put a bulb in the new holder and touch the wires to the other wires we have prepared to check the bulb lights.

Now, because bulbs are essentially a joined electrode in gas it should work no matter which way around we touch the wires. L.E.Ds however may be different. Now here the colours of the wires are different anyway on the speedo and the new holder. The way the T10 bulb connects is identical either side as well so it really doesn't matter as you could turn an L.E.D around if it only worked one way anyway. This is probably why the wires are oddly colored, for example black or blue is usually negative polarity (-) and red or brown is usually positive (+). On the speedo we have green and brown wires, I might take brown to be positive but you cannot be sure without a meter to test. On the new holder we have blue (usually negative) and white. So since I would never join blue and brown on principal, I chose to go the other way around. Brown to white and blue to green. Another important factor in checking is to make sure the new holder is in good working condition before we hard solder it in place. 

I am going to solder them and use some heat-shrink sheathing to insulate the join as I now have some here, you could use electrical tape but it's not as good an option. It looks tatty and less professional but, is ok for a temporary solution. It's best to lightly coat each wire with solder then join them together with the heat, as the solder melts together across both wires. Not too much solder or you won't slide the heat-shrink sheath over the join. Once the sheath is in place it should be shrunk with a heat gun or strong hair dryer. My heat gun decided to give up the ghost (it's been a DIY workhorse over the years for me) so I used a hair dryer in this instance, which worked fine.

Once that's all done you can check your bulb is working properly & put it all back together again.

Checking the dimensions of that rear speedo screw.

Ok, so there's no spare part available / listed to just go and buy this part, so the only thing to do is buy a new speedo or one from an online breaker which is still about £30.00. Thirty quid for a screw! No thanks so we are going to do what we did with the bolts for the luggage rack; check the thread, measure it up and find an alternative replacement.

Now the brass screw is an electrical connector, it joins the wire by the ring connector at it's head to where the end of the screw connects inside the unit. Because of this the screw cannot have any thread lock applied or it will block the electrical signal by insulating the end. Because of this thread length is important, as it needs to make that connection.

So going through my dies I get a perfect fit for M3 x 0.5 pitch. The thread length is about 22mm overal length about 24mm with the cap but since you will find it hard to find one exactly the same just go by the thread length.

I found some steel hex cap head screws with the same dimensions on eBay and ordered them. Now electrical oriented screws generally tend to be made from brass, maybe due to conductivity but, I don't really see the steel being that much of an issue here. Even though a lot of places actually have brass down as quite a poor conductor, it seems to be better than steel. There is copper in it's make up. There are no brass screws in those dimensions with that head type, only a conical /countersink type head which won't connect to our ring connector properly. 

 (table courtesy of Metal Super Markets).

Material IACS (International Annealed Copper Standard)
Ranking	Metal	% Conductivity*
1	Silver (Pure)	105%
2	Copper	100%
3	Gold (Pure)	70%
4	Aluminum	61%
5	Brass	28%
6	Zinc	27%
7	Nickel	22%
8	Iron (Pure)	17%
9	Tin	15%
10	Phosphor Bronze	15%
11	Steel (Stainless included)	3-15%
12	Lead (Pure)	7%
13	Nickel Aluminum Bronze	7%

* Conductivity ratings are expressed as a relative measurement to copper. A 100% rating does not indicate no resistance.

Starter / ignition update, luggage rack bolts and using a branded solenoid.

Starter / ignition update.

So, I have finally got my ignition problem sorted out. It seems as though the battery was the fault after all. I was told a battery can go bad by losing it's 'amperage' but the volts can still be high and registering good (12v +). The good amperage is what is needed to crank the motor. 

Since I thought my voltage regulator / rectifier may have something wrong with it, back after my previous battery failed but, didn't know where it was to find it. I just wanted to change it out for sake of mind and also the problems I had with the l.e.ds blowing. I figured maybe the regulator needed changing and maybe faulty after all. It's likely it's damaged the cells by not regulating the voltage correctly.

A way to test this was by shorting or bypassing the solenoid across the two points (with the nuts on). Remember the solenoid is just a switch, an electro-magnetic one but just a switch all the same. A positive in and out, you're just joining them back up again!

Now this is another way to point out a faulty solenoid but we can kind of rule that out now. You can short it by using a piece of insulated wire with ends exposed or a screw driver. Remember if your not using something insultated you WILL get a 12v shock! If the battery isn't up to switching the solenoid the power will go straight to the motor and you can see if it's weak or not. If it gos and it's weak in turning the motor it's battery related, if it's got a good turn over then it's a poor solenoid / starter relay that's not working.

When done the motor turned but very poorly and briefly this pointed similar to a low charged battery although it was registering good voltage, it suddenly seemed the above was my trouble after all.  

I do have another battery here the same size, a cheap but brand new Yuasa branded job for a different bike, I thought I would swap it out to test but, first I swapped out the voltage regulator rectifier for a brand new two plug one (my bike takes the two plug version). There was no point in damaging another battery before hand. 

Changing voltage regulator rectifier.

When I swapped the voltage regulator / rectifier the voltage gauge gave me a different reading with the new one. 

Two blocks below 12v (that rose back towards 15v when running) on the old battery. The previous one read between 12v - 15v (that rose back towards 15v when running). So right away there's a difference between the two components which raised my eyebrows. Now, I don't know for sure if the regulator was faulty /damaged or just wasn't brilliant or if I just had two macaroni batteries in a row (unlikely). Even though the Powerline battery seemed good on paper remember, it was still cheap. But it still wouldn't start off the button on the old battery.

Remember the voltage regulator / rectifier is underneath the rear right hand side panel, if you want to find it.

I swapped out the flasher unit next to it for a new one while I was there, they're only cheap and it's due for its first M.O.T in the new year. I don't intend to go back under there anytime soon. I kept the old one for spare as it hadn't failed of course but I would rather a new one in there with the M.O.T coming up.

After I put the Yuasa battery in & run it a bit to make sure charge was up I successfully turned the motor & started the bike off the button again several times, I could even hear the solenoid clicking / switching  properly.

So in a nutshell, it was the battery but, batteries can fail in a way that is confusing because they still show good charge, although the cells have been damaged. So I will run this battery a couple of weeks just to see how things are going, then buy a better replacement, as this is for another bike. I'll likely try an Enduroline battery, which claims to have more power than lithium batteries but one to throw a few more coins at just in case it was due to a cheap battery going bad over time however my money was on the voltage regulator being the issue.

 Luggage rack bolts.

I did say I would try to check the sizes of the luggage rack bolts, to swap them rusting ones out for better stainless steel ones. Now they are an M8 thread with a pitch of 1.25, overall screw length of 65mm and a screw thread length of only 25mm.

So: M8 x 1.25 x 65mm

Now a full length threaded bolt would still do the job but I wanted them as close to the original ones as possible. You won't find a listing for 25mm thread length but you will find visually some on eBay that fit the above dimensions with a partial thread. That will do ( & may well be 25mm anyway). There were some titanium examples but £5.00 a bolt is ridiculous for an application such as this. A pack of 5 steel were about £2.00 - £3.00. I forgot to pick up some stainless replacement washers but, that's not such a big deal. I can get those at a later date.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/M8-8mm-A2-STAINLESS-STEEL-PART-THREADED-BOLT-SCREW-HEXAGON-HEX-HEAD-DIN931/190771325125?_trksid=p2045573.c100033.m2042&_trkparms=aid%3D111001%26algo%3DREC.SEED%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D20131017132637%26meid%3Deb182dfa1e2f44948ce32483030bd52d%26pid%3D100033%26rk%3D5%26rkt%3D8%26sd%3D322151517956

Before I put the old bolts back on for now, I ran my M8 x 1.25 die over each one and re-cut the thread with a touch of WD-40, as there was all rust built up and slightly bent thread due to the soft metal used. None of that should be an issue when the replacements arrive. 

Using a solenoid from a Japanese bike.

Back when I had my starting troubles and thought it could be the solenoid I thought about maybe using a solenoid off a Japanese (or other) manufacturers bike. Since solenoids are all essentially the same thing (a switch) just different in dimensions and cable connections, it is in fact very possible indeed. The solenoid used for the XTRS is the same one pretty much used in many Chinese GY6 type scooters for example. 

Now, I did find a Honda solenoid that looked like it might fit (maybe what these were modeled after in the 1st place). In fact on the site the same one is used for many Honda bikes and quad bikes.

http://patternparts.net/starter-relay-for-2008-honda-trx-500-fpm8-fourtrax-fourman-4x4-eps

Now it's likely not an original Honda part (it says as much) and indeed maybe Chinese again but you could use the model information above to source a genuine Honda part. You would need to change the connector for the two wires, you could do this by cutting the wires off your old one and soldering them to this one instead. Just a thought.