The wiring wasn't the worst part of our Superdream but not knowing the history of it I was a little weary of just connecting up a battery and seeing what happens.I decided to strip the loom so that I could check that there were no chaffed cables or connectors that may have been on their last legs.
First thing to do was remove any 'electronic' components from the loom such as diodes. Other major components such as the rectifier was still attached to the bike. I wouldn't recommend this process for such components! After this first step I was left with wire and connectors.
Next thing I did was to remove any electric tape from the loom. In the picture above you'll see that there's plastic and tape. I left the plastic in place because a) it's hard to remove and b) it's there for a reason.
Once I'd removed the tape I went around the loom and cable tied all the wires together that should be grouped together. I did this as I went along so that the wires didn't end up everywhere.
Removing the tape had left a sticky residue on the cables and if it wasn't removed it would have got dirty very quickly. Also some of the connectors (see the red connector at the top right of the picture that connects to the rectifier) were really covered in road crap, oil and dirt.
To remove all of these problems I dropped the loom into a bucket of hot water and paraffin
Pretty much straight away the water changed colour as the dirt and oil was dissolved by the paraffin. I gave it a stir with a trusty screwdriver and left it for half an hour. I came back and stirred it again. Left it another half an hour and rinsed the loom off. I then repeated this process and I ended up with the loom looking like this
Lastly, I made some repairs to damaged connectors, trimmed the cable ties and went over the loom with some new black electrical tape to protect the loom when it's back on the bike.
Just a small warning, be careful with paraffin it can be pretty nasty stuff.
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