Installation of a Voltage Monitor in a Honda Silver Wing

Many of our scoots have electrical systems just barely adequate to keep the scoot running and the battery charged. Add a few lights, electrical gear or the like and you might be pushing the electrical system too far. Do that enough and you could end up getting stuck on the side of the road with a dead battery. So, wouldn't it be nice to know the status of your electrical system before a problem occurs ? This way you can keep the electrical draw within proper limits. You can and it's easy to do.

I looked around and there a number of voltage monitors available. I selected the Signal Dynamics Heads Up Voltage Monitor. www.signaldynamics.com   It's a simple single LED system that tells you if the electrical system is putting out too much, not enough or just the right amount of voltage.

If things are good the LED is green, marginal and it's yellow, low voltage and it's red. Very low voltage and it flashes red. If you have too much voltage, than it flashes green. It comes with a little sticker you can put on the dash to remind you of all that but, come on, if you can't remember that, you probably shouldn't be riding anyway! LOL

Installation on a Silver Wing is fairly simple  there are only 2 wires to hook up and an LED to install.

First,  you remove the windshield trim, then the windshield.  Below is what you'll be looking at. I decided to install the LED on the underside of the 'dash' so, I needed to remove the dash cover shown below. There are 2 screws and 2 clips. (Push the center portion of the clip and once it's pushed in the clip comes right out.)

Now you can see the actual 'dash'. Note that when you put the cover back on (the one we just took off), there are both little 'pins' that go into the 3 holes shown below and also tabs that go underneath the lip the holes below are on. It takes a bit of work but the arrangement keeps the dash nice and tight and prevents rattles.

I would have liked to place the LED right in the middle of the 'dash', sort of right in front of the middle hole on the lip above. But, the space between that and the cover we just took off is only about 1/2" and we need more space to fit the LED. The LED and where it's wired in is rigid and about 1" Below I show how the LED would stick up if mounted in the middle.

I've done this on other Silver Wings so I knew that I could get enough room at the very end. Below you can see the LED will fit towards the end. I will actually  install it behind the clip where there is even more room. This picture is just to show that there is more room at the end. Also, this is a photo of the right side of the dash (right as you sit on the scoot) but I will install on the left side.

Below is just another shot behind the clip. You can see the black part around the wires just clears the red trim of the scoot. The LED hole isn't drilled yet so when it is, we will get about another 1/4" of room which will allow the wires to be bent back.

Below is a bad photo showing the hole drilled (to the right of the clip). Note the damage to the plastic where the dremel tool hit. Due to the angle, it's hard to avoid doing that. It doesn't show when the windshield is back on so doesn't matter. 

Below is what the hole looks like from the front. I like drilling from the back 'cause the front of the hole seems to come much cleaner. There will be a bezel around the hole so, even if it is a little ragged, it won't show.

With the LED installed. See how close the fit is. It just barely makes it. The LED is installed from the back and there is a bezel that installs from the front and locks it in.

The unit needs power and I take it from the low beam since, the low beam is always on when the bike is running but off when it's not. Don't wire direct to the battery or any power source that doesn't run through the ignition or the LED, given enough time, will drain the battery.

Below you see there is a plug that is just inside the fairing. That has all the wires for the front lights. I tapped the wires on the right side of the plug (they are the mostly untaped ones). You want the Green one (ground) and white one (low beam hot) per the service manual wiring diagram.

OK, here I need to digress a bit. In the past, in 4 other installs, I just used the very handy wire taps that come with the monitor. You wrap the tap around the wire you want to use and there is another place to insert the wire from the monitor, squeeze with pliers and you are done. For some reason, they didn't work this time. I don't know why and never figured it out so I resorted to my next favorite method.

In the 'old days' I would simply cut the wire I was tapping into, add the new wire, twist the three together, put electrical tape on and call it done. I actually never had a problem doing this but I was always concerned that they wires might come undone. I wouldn't care if the battery monitor stopped working - there is no actual need for that but, it would be a problem if the headlight stopped working. So, my method for the last 10 years or so,  when I do installs like this is to not cut the wire but to just strip it, then wrap the new wire around it and throw on tape. This way the original wire is never cut and can't come loose.

In the photo below you can see the green (ground) wire is stripped a bit and I've attached the black wire from the monitor. (I took the plug apart to make it easier to work on). Some tape around the wire and it's good to go. If you look lower down the white wire you can see where I attached the red wire from the monitor.

Another thing I try to do is to strip the wires at different spots so that if the wires should somehow wear thru the electrical tape, the 2 bare areas are not next to each other and hopefully that will prevent a short.

Note - I don't endorse or recommend this method. I've no idea of the downside to it. I'm only saying that's the way I do it and I've never had a problem.

I did have other problems installing and I'll go over those at the bottom of this page because they really aren't directly related to how easy this is to install.

Just another shot below showing the white wire a bit better.

In the shot below, I've put the tape around the wires, put the plug together and put it back into the fairing. Look closely where the wire tie is held and you will see the black metal tab that holds the plug in place. It's just a thin metal strip and I bent it forward a bit to run the wire tie thru it. The black box held by the wire tie is the monitor 'brain'.

Put everything back together and here is what it looks like from the front. The monitor red LED is on the left side of the dash cover.

Here's how it looks at night

PROBLEMS - Some of my own making.

When the wire taps failed, before I  removed them and attached the wires as above, I did some testing. I used a meter to make sure I'd tapped the right wires and that everything was getting power. I did this by tapping to the contacts inside the plug shown in the photos above. BUT - I didn't have a probe or clip small enough to fit into the plug at each wire (this side of the plug is the female side). I searched around and finally found a couple of small screwdrivers (real small, like you fix eyeglasses with) and pushed them into the plug, one for the green wire, one for the white. I confirmed they were the right wires via the meter and then by attaching the monitor wires to the screwdrivers everything worked so, I removed the screwdrivers, stripped the wires and proceeded as above. Several times as I was putting everything back together I checked that the monitor was working, wrapped everything up and put everything back together. Only when all was done and I went to take it for a ride did I discover the headlights weren't working. Neither high or low. Actually, if you look in the photo above, the last one, you can see that the scoot is on, the high beam light is on but if you look at the wall in front of the bike - no light hitting it! I should have noticed it then but I must have been busy taking the photo.

The monitor was still working so I knew there was power to the plug but I checked and replaced all the fuses anyway. I pulled everything apart and scratched my head for a while before I finally figure out what I'd done. When I pushed the screwdrivers into the plug, I'd compressed a part of the plug so that it was no longer making contact when the 2 parts were together. Due to the way the plug is formed there was no way I could get in and 'bend back' the part I'd bent. I surely didn't want to replace the plug. What I finally was able to do was to take about 1/2" of some small solid copper wire, strip the insulation off, bend it on itself so I had 1/4" of bare wire and drop it into the contact of the plug. I did this for both the green and white wire contacts. Then, when I pushed the plug together the pieces of wire I'd added bridged the gaps I'd made and all the lights worked. I was going to take the plug apart and check things but the plug was actually locked tighter together now than it had been originally so, I decided to let things be now that everything worked.

I'm relaying this embarrassing tale to you for 2 reasons  1) Don't be ham fisted like I am, and 2) If you are, don't panic. Most things can be fixed without too much problem.