LMAO !!
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Good luck with routing the cables through the frame.. I did the same with my Sporty... it was painful... :-)
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Should've just let me mail you a couple.


I had trouble tracking them down too. The below is an actual conversation with an O Reilly's store worker...

I'm looking for Schrader valves.

uh wut?

Schrader valves. They're small brass fittings with a threaded end and a vavle like what's used to air up a car tire.

(*baffled look) We don't have those. What do they go on?

They're a universal part but I'll be using the to modify some shocks for a Harley.

We don't sell Harley parts.

It's a UNIVERSAL part.

We don't sell Universal Harley parts.

Me:


I later returned with the part number. Walked in and told him I was looking for tank valves. He said "nope, don't have that either". So I had him punch the number in the computer to humor and he lead me right to them on aisle 4.

 

Oh that's encouraging. Thanks Joe.

 

I hear that. Next time I'll listen.

 

I use to work on big trucks back in the day. They have air lines everywhere on them and I think we had a few for shop use. That was 15 plus years ago.

 

I've seen these things from time to time over the years but didn't know what they were called. I remember reading in the RK Shock thread where guys were saying "Ya, just go to the auto parts store and ask for schrader valves." like everyone would automatically know what you were talking about. I went to 3 different auto parts stores and 3 hardware stores, plus Home Depot and Lowes. No one had a clue. One guy at NAPA spent 15 or 20 minutes in the store catalog and the inventory computer and couldn't come up with anything even remotely close. "Tank valves" did the trick, though they are still pretty rare on the shelves, at least around here.

 

So this weekend was a bust. Didn't get any time in the shop but we did manage a few hours last night. Spent the first hour, maybe a bit less, wrapping the bundle of wires going through the upper hole in the main down tube and out the upper hole under the tank. These are the headlight wires and everything for the handlebar controls. It's a big bundle and it took some time to get them down to a bunch small enough to fit entirely through the frame. But we made it.


Attached a wire to the whole bundle and started pulling it though. By pulling gently on the wire and pushing the bundle from the rear it finally came all the way through.






All of these wires will be spliced, extended and hardwired right to their destination. We're not gonna phuc with the old connectors. There's no room to hide them under the tank and there's really no need for them once the bike is reassembled. If I change something in the future (what's the likelihood of that?!? ) I'll just cut and resplice it.

Here's what's left in the battery box area. It looks like a mess, and well, it is, but it's actually not as bad as it looks. All the remaining wires are identified and we just have to organize that mess, wrap it and stow it in some as-yet-to-be-determined fashion. All of it will be out of sight behind the side cover, under the battery box and oil tank so aside from making everything fit I'm not too worried about it.


That's all that are going through that hole. Everything else going through the frame will access it from the hole in the bottom of that main down tube in the battery box area. There remains the seperate bundle of wires coming from the fuel injectors which will be run backwards from the hole on the bottom of the main tube under the tank, just above the injectors. Those wires have to be extended to reach the hole at the bottom of the battery box where they will plug back into the original connector on the harness. There are also the four wires going to the coil which will also be cut and spliced to extend them to run through that bottom hole in the battery area to the bottom hole under the tank. The rest of the wires will be heat shrinked into a single bunch and run down from the battery box under the engine to the front of the bike - oil sensor, voltage regulator, O2 sensor, horn, etc. That way, there are no wires running down the side of the frame or the engine.

So that out of the way, we decided to spend some time mocking up some bars, just to get an idea of sitting position and the look I want. No pics yet, we are just brainstorming and playing around with different ideas. Hopefully, Saturday will be a full day in the shop and I will have more to report.

 

I know wiring is not the most interesting part of the build but it is what it is, and for those who are fascinated by this stuff or those who just enjoy seeing others suffer, here's some of the latest progress on the wiring portion of the project. Trust me, this is way more tedious for me than it is for you.

Started about 2pm yesterday. I began by moving and sorting the rat's nest of wires still sticking out of the hole in the battery compartment so I could put the battery and the oil tank in place to get an idea of what has to run where and which wires have to be cut, spliced and rerouted. From there I decided to work on all the wires NOT going through the frame, the ones running under the engine to the lower front - Voltage regulator, horn, oil pressure switch, O2 sensor, and crank position sensor. Figured getting them wrapped and run would get them out of the way. I'm using a heavy plastic wire wrap - it's flexible and adjustable, and most importantly, you can undo it and redo it over and over, which is what I had to do several times to get everything to fit correctly. We had to lengthen the horn wires and the oil pressure switch wire and shorten the voltage regulator and crank position sensor wires. First we added wired to lengthen the ones that were too short and then started wrapping the whole bundle. I actually did this a couple of times because the first time I managed to leave out the two horn wires which somehow got lost in the madness. It only cost me an hour...







Once I got all the wires long enough to go from the battery box down underneath the engine and up to the lower front behind the skid plate, we shortened the ones that were way too long so that everything terminated where it needed to be without a lot of extra wire hanging around looking like crap. In the end everything is stowed nicely down behind the skid plate and the whole thing looks pretty good. I didn't get a final pic as we were short on time and rushing through this pretty fast.




And while I was doing a lot of the scut work on that Oz was working to lengthen all the wires that run to the fuel injectors, in between doing most of the soldering on all the wires. There's a large connector in the main harness that joins with one coming from the fuel injectors. In stock form this is a short run. But for us, all those wires will go from the battery box down to the hole in the bottom of the main frame downtube, back up through the frame and out the hole just above the fuel injectors. So all those wires have to be cut and spliced. You know you're into it when you start cutting big connectors for important engine components off the main harness.




That was 9:30pm and we had to quit. Good day. Made a lot of progress even though the pics don't show much. Still got a lot left to do but I am starting to see some light at the end of the wiring tunnel.

 

Looking good - you will get there Ergo!

 

How deep a breath was it before you snipped that connector off?