Quick question about repairing wires, I have about 4 wires that go under the motor that have been rubbed through, they are all corroded pretty bad, and some of the copper strands are severed, whats the best way to fix them up, I was thinking of just cutting out the bad spots out and just solder them back together and wrap them in tape?
hereismylife
Active member
you should cut them back far enough to have clean wire. then you can solder the wires and make sure you heat shrink them to keep the water out. they do make tubular heat shrink connectors that any parts stores carry...make sure you have a good connection and it is waterproof
I had this on my SXR a couple years ago, I cut out the bad wiring and installed about 8" longer wire for each individual wire. This allowed me to reroute the harness from under the engine. I used heat shrink but connectors at each end and a length of heat shrink tubing to cover all of the wirine harness. It looks OEM and protects the wires. Al
Thanks a lot for the input guys, last year I had a problems with it misfiring and dropping a cylinder so I cleaned the carbs and the one pilot jet was plugged it ran pretty good after and I found the rubbed through wires and just taped them but there corroded so that can't be good, the sled still seems to bog a bit and the exhaust seems to have unburnt fuel in there, on the carbs the setting for the air screw was 1.75 turns out and stock says it's supposed to be 1.5 turns out, if they are turned out more then 1.5 will it cause the carbs to get more fuel? I wasn't sure if the carbs got more air if it would cause a vacuum making them suck more fuel, thanks for any input
Those are fuel screws, not air screws. So turning them out more will give you more fuel.
alright thanks, I guess it would probably be best to turn that back to 1.5? Another question the wire harness that has the rub throughs under the frame im trying to solder some pieces in to make them longer but the stranded wire is black and not copper, is this normal?
No, thats not normal. The wire turns black from water damage.
ya thats what i figured, im trying to cut the black stuff out but im getting to the point where im almost out of wire, with it being black like that the machine cant run the greatest?
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Cut out as much of it as you can, be sure your splices are water tight and you will be ok.
alright thanks, do you have any tips on trying to solder that? It will stick to the fresh copper good but just wants to roll off the black wire, and I will be sure to heat shrink it after.
I'm no good at soldering, but I know that different types of solder and or flux are better then others in different conditions and materials. Maybe someone who's good with solder will chime in.
yamaha06 said:
The black covering of the copper strands is oxidation from exposure to atmosphere. No need to cut it out just use some sand paper folded in half and pull the wire through the paper to get you back to bare copper then put some flux core solder and heat to it. The oxidation has no affect on performance of the wire since it's just a coating but as you found the flux can not penatrate it. Same principal as sweating copper pipe. You have to have clean surfaces for the solder to adhear and flow.
I'd also recommend double wall adheasive shrink tube rather than single wall. The double wall will make the joint waterproof where as the single wall non-adheasive will not. Heat the connection until the adheasive oozes out of the ends all the way around.
The single wall shrink tubing is better than tape but it is not waterproof.
You might find it at places like RS electronics or maybe Radioshack but I know you can find it at your local Ford/L/M dealer. The part numbers below also include solder type butt splices which makes for a nice clean connection without the worry of single strand poke through commonly found in twisted connections.
Motorcraft part #
WT-56814 for 22-18 AWG
WT-56815 for 16-14 AWG
WT-56816 for 12-10 AWG