Well, I was right. It was the frayed wires from the timing pickup coils that were the problem. Apparently when I was looking at them yesterday, I wiggled them enough so that the last strands came apart.
So I patched that back up by splicing in a new section of wire and re-routing it away from the spring on the kickstand that had chewed through it in the first place. It wasn’t the first time this had been repaired either – someone has been doing a bunch of electrical work to this bike, and they were not very skilled.
While I was down there, I removed the kickstand switch and jumpered it to get rid of the annoying “Stand” warning light. Surprisingly enough, the Haynes manual was wrong about the switch. The Haynes manual said that when the stand was up, all three wires should be connected (why you need three wires for a side stand switch, I have no idea.) But when I twisted all three wires together, the bike refused to start!
So I untwisted them, started the bike, and used a jumper to discover which two turned off the light. Then I clipped the third one off and soldered the other two together. No more light.
I also cut the notch in the side cover to clear the sidecar strut mounting point – it looks great now!
I have ordered a couple of clamps from J.C. Whitney that should be what I need to attach the steering damper and a six position fuse block to replace the stock one. The stock fuse block is falling apart and someone has already replaced two of the fuses with in-line holders. The stock block has four positions, so I’ll have a couple left over for hooking up my electric vest and other equipment.
