Hey folks, I'm new to the community and a proud owner of a 98 VTR. Not sure the mileage, because the guy I bought it from had replaced the headlight with one of those Taiwan street fighter headlights and pulled all the wire connectors out of place. I have plans of my own, but I want to hook everything back up to "standard" then work from that point. Well, I have found many an error and tried my best to get everything connected and spliced properly on the front end. As of tonight, everything but the standard headlight was hook up. I had retaped everything from the main harness from the engine forward. I hooked up the horn and hit the horn switch. No horn, but the gauges lit up. No activity on the dials either. the guy did hard wire a manual switch for the radiator fan, but cant see how he spliced that in without pull the airbox. So I assume I have a short somewhere that needs attention, but trying to find the bugger is the tough part. Any good resources available for tackling this deep an electrical issue?

Thanks from Richmond, VA

 

Ok i am going to jump into the frying pan and ask "Who or what" is Jack wagon.

Electrical problems are the worst to chase down. First of all you need to get a factory manual or maybe a current member can get you the electrical diagram pages for reference.

You mentioned tape and electrical. I hope your PO and you are not taping twisted wires together. If so that is your first problem and you need to either pickup a soldering iron, solder and heat shrink and solder the connections together or at the least use wire connectors and a proper crimping tool.

 

 

Jack Wagon is a reference to an old Geico Commercial where R Lee Ermey is in character as the Drill Sargent in Full Metal Jacket, only acting as a therapist in the commercial. Neither here nor there. I'm running through the PDF version of the Service Manual now, but have a print copy in the mail for when I have a few hours of time to sit with everything. By "taping" I mean "wrapping" the wires in electrical tape for binding and organizing. I have a soldering iron I use for wiring my guitar pick ups and other electronics, and numerous splices, connecters and wire courtesy of the friendly neighborhood radio shack. Honestly, I'm just trying the see where everything is supposed to go and what is supposed to be there so I know what is missing and where to start. Thanks for the input.

 

Ok then ,never in my life heard that reference before.

 

There's a 98 vtr1000f wiring harness on ebay now for less than $20. It might give you a useful point of reference if it hasn't been butchered.

 

Navigate to this link and download a copy of the wiring diagram from Tweety's site:

*Tweety's Wild Thinking

 

I have gone through the links provided and found out that my mystery orange wire was not an orange wire at all. The aforementioned "Jack Wagon" spliced the orange wire to one of the main ground wires. I think I have everything back in order, but still no dash lights unless I have the horn hooked up and press the horn switch. I'm going to have to trace everything and make sure all the grounds are secured and verify that all wiring has continuity. The one silver lining...she still fires up strong on the first try. Thanks again for all the help and suggestions, but the one thing I really need with this project is patience.