Well,
as far as I can tell, all of the known issues on my bike are now sorted out. 9 days ago I noticed that the left LED headlamp low beam was not working as it should (the high beam was fine), and I was getting flaky and erratic readings and behavior from the USB charger / voltmeter that plugs into the BMW / Powerlet socket I added to the left fairing four years ago.
First things first: as chronicled
elsewhere, the headlight issue could be (and was) traced to abrasion of the wiring pigtail leading to interruption of the conductor to one of the low beam emitters, likely caused by incorrect installation of the light (my bad, totally). New lamps have been sourced, ordered, and delivered and today was replacement day. As usual the most time-consuming part of the job was stripping the left side tupperware, but I needed to do that anyhow because of the other problem.
Having replaced the LED headlamp (easy-peasy), it was time to diagnose what the heck was going on with that Powerlet port. The initial symptom was that the indicated voltage jumped all over the place, quite rapidly, especially when the phone was plugged in to be charged. Without that, the voltage read stable at around 11.9-12.1.
However, when I buttoned everything up last week (the bike lives in the driveway so it can't really be left exposed and I don't trust the cover alone to provide adequate weather protection), the port stopped working altogether. I was guessing that somewhere in the reassembly process I may have knocked one of the connectors loose. If so, it'd be an easy fix. Or so I thought. Knowing I'd be doing the plastics again this weekend I let it slide for the week. With the headlight out I wasn't going to be riding anyhow.
Sure enough when I looked this morning one of the leads was dangling loose. BUT- the reason for that was that the prong on the back of the port had sheared off. So the port would have to be replaced. No problem- I happened to have a flush-mount USB / volt meter display port on hand and ready to go. First, of course, it was time to check that the new port worked when connected to the bike. Nope- not a twitch. Whaaaaaa?
After some hunting and continuity checking with the multimeter (which in and of itself was a minor adventure- the internal fuse was loose so the meter wasn't working when I first tried it out), I isolated the problem to the ground wire from my DIY wiring of four years ago Not a problem with the ground connection- there was a disruption somewhere in the wire itself.
The initial wiring did not include a quick disconnect, so every time the panel came off the wires had to come off the back of the Powerlet port. That may have contributed to its early demise. Last fall I added a connector and thought "Problem solved". Not So Fast, My Friend. If you do shoddy work, you'll pay for it in the end.
My original wiring was juuuuuuuuust long enough, but adding the connector was stretching things a bit too far. So, I had cheated and extended the wiring
via a short pigtail, connected with slightly-too-small Posi-Lock connectors. My ham-handed work was not up to the forces involved in tupperware removal, and I had managed to pull one end of the ground wire out of the Posi-Lock.
Faced with the self-induced mess I'd made, and having laid the bike bare on the left side anyhow, it was clear that a better-quality repair was in order. I fashioned a new, longer, no-splices-included bit of wiring and pulled it through the path where the old wire had been. Of course I was not foresighted enough to use the original wiring as a proxy for a fish tape, so I got to spend a good bit of energy and knuckle skin getting the new wiring in place. With everything in place and the new USB / voltmeter socket connected, I crossed my fingers, turned the key, and ... voila! Spanky Lives!
The next task was to enlarge the hole I'd drilled originally to seat the Powerlet; the new socket is considerably larger in diameter and would not fit in the existing hole. After a false start with my coping saw (there was no way to actually bring the blade to bear as it needed to) I hit on the idea of using the Dremel tool with a grinding bit. After tracing the approximate outline of the base of the new socket onto the plastic with a Sharpie, I started grinding away and made a nice, clean, just-the-right-size opening for the charger port.
Having cured all the ills, everything went back together with a minimum of fuss and drama, for a change. I was going to take a victory lap and move some tags, but the weather picture looks to be getting rather dicey so that will have to wait for another day.
