[zaxizax]

Hi everyone.
First time poster and a quick introduction.
Got my first 2005 V-strom DL650 3 months ago. I commute from Santa Monica to Burbank, about 50 miles round-trip. The bike is awesome. Strong and heavy enough for LA highway speeds, narrow enough for lane splitting. The commute with a car is 45 min - 90 min (one way) depending on traffic, with the Strom it is 25-35 min, and full of fun. (I use 405, 101 and 134)
I was going to get a BMW F650. Then by luck I got a chance to drive this DL650. Fell in love with it instantly, I don't even remember how the F650 looks anymore.

Few weeks ago the fuse started to blow out when I pulled the front brake. The full instrument panel went dead plus the signals, rear lights and brake lights. I isolated the problem down to the brakes. Either brake was pulled the fuse blew. Went searching online and find a great article about a wire routing flaw. Long story short I thought I would give back something to the community by documenting my fix.

1. Take off the left side panel.
2. Locate the U shape metal piece seen in the photo. It has sharp inner edges, that is responsible for cutting and shorting the white/black brake light wires.
3. I used a plastic pen for a tube. I cut the tube along the side and put over the wires to protect them from future abrasions.
4. Also there is a plastic rail seen in the photos. Route the plastic tube behind the rail so it will not get in touch with the metal edge.

That's it problem fixed. Hope this writeup will help other strommers to fix a short problem similar to this.

U shaped metal piece.

Wires cut by the sharp edges of the metal piece.

Plastic tube (pen)

Wires routed inside the plastic tube.

Plastic routing rail.

Wires nicely hidden in the plastic tube plus routed behind the plastic rail far away from the sharp metal.

 

[p38arover]

Thanks for that, I'll check mine before I have the problem.

 

[greywolf]

Only 2004 650s and some early 2005s had that problem.

 

[ozart]

Thanks Zax, that's a well documented problem in the years GW stated.
Good to have a refresher, thanks.

 

[zaxizax]

Only 2005 650s and some early 2006s had that problem.

Yes, exactly. I read it in the forums but only after my problem started. I couldn't find an illustrated writeup so decided to put one up.
How did Suzuki fix it from the 2006 and up?

 

[greywolf]

They reminded the assembly line workers the wiring harness goes in a channel in that plastic piece. I missed the years. It was 2004 and early 2005.

http://www.calsci.com/motorcycleinfo/PDFs/WireHarness.pdf

 

[zaxizax]

They reminded the assembly line workers the wiring harness goes in a channel in that plastic piece. I missed the years. It was 2004 and early 2005.

http://www.calsci.com/motorcycleinfo/PDFs/WireHarness.pdf

Ok, so it was not an actual design problem, the plastic cable rail is there on all models, it just the assembly got lazy or overlooked. I am amazed that for a full year workers were routing the cable outside the holder even if it's clearly there.
But anyway. easy fix.
Thanks for the pdf, it's shows exactly what the problem was.

 

[tpak]

Only 2004 650s and some early 2005s had that problem.

Is there anything about these bikes you DON'T know? Good grief that is an esoteric bit of V-Strom model year knowledge!

Edit: OK, seems to be well known but still man - what doesn't GW know about these bikes?

 

[greywolf]

Well, I did get the years wrong at first.

 

[bwringer]

I love seeing writeups with pictures like this because it's so helpful to beginning mechanics.

Sometimes I get frustrated trying to help someone diagnose a problem because I'll say something like "just look all along the wires and look for anything that doesn't look right". The problem is, without experience, they simply don't know what looks right and what doesn't.

One guy thought maybe the problem was the wires were dusty and dirty, so he was scrubbing away with Windex or something, but totally missed a dead short I spotted in about 5 seconds. Not his fault -- just something he'd never encountered before.

These pictures show what it looks like to find and repair a simple fault caused by damaged wires. Very helpful! :hurray: