Well this took a while! I finally tackled one of the jobs on the list that I had been dreading the most- redoing the wiring. This was going to be difficult for a number of reasons; 1. I have deleted the original instrument panel and ignition and planned to install an Acewell speedo and M-Lock keyless ignition, 2. I had some trick LED multifunction indicators to install and 3, I’d never done this before. However armed with the full colour wiring diagram in Haynes and the help of various forums everything seems to have worked out well.
The old wiring harness was very dirty and the cloth wrapping was disintegrating in places. I removed all the old tape and cleaned every wire individually with WD-40 and a rag. This was time consuming but some of the wires were so dirty I couldn’t even see what colour they were.
Acewell 4xxx Speedo
After cleaning I started to think about wiring up the Acewell Speedo. I have used the Acewell 4xxx series unit as pictured. This has inputs for 6 warning lights:
- Left Indicator (White wire)
- Right Indicator (Orange wire)
- Oil pressure (Pale green)
- High beams (Grey wire)
- Hazard lights (Purple wire-I have decided to use this as the charge indicator light)
- Neutral (Pale blue)
The Acewell unit has two main dongles (black connectors) and 3 smaller connectors which are white. One of the main connectors has six coloured wires and is the input for the warning lights mentioned above and the other brings in clock power (constant), switched main power, the input line for the RPM signal and the input for the speedo signal. There is also a water temperature input and a fuel level input both of which I won’t be using.
The three white connectors on the Acewell are for air temp sensor (included), lap timer button (included) and IRX-101 auto lap timer (not included). I will use the airtemp sensor but not the other two.
Looking at the wiring diagram for the r65 I found the wires for these warning light inputs in the top left as shown. On the wiring harness these are the wires going into the multi-pin connector. The colours on the BMW harness are as follows:
- Left indicator (Blue with red stripe)
- Right indicator (Blue with black stripe)
- Oil Pressure (Brown with green stripe)
- High beams (White)
- Charge indicator (Blue)
- Neutral (Brown with black stripe)
There is another wire coming out of the multi-pin connector that proved to be quite important- it’s pale green with blue stripe. This is a switched power line which is actually part of the charging circuit from the D+ terminal of the diode board or voltage regulator (silver box with red stripe). The airhead uses the circuit through the instrument panel warning light as the charge circuit, so simply wiring the blue wire into the acewell would cause the charge warning light to come on but not actually charge the circuit! The solution to this problem is to wire a wire with a 330om resistor between the pale green/blue stripe wire and the blue wire so that the circuit is intact regardless of the instrument light. This is essential if you are deleting the original instrument cluster.
The other black connector on the acewell needs the following connections:
- Clock (constant) power : Red BMW to BROWN acewell
- Switched (main) power: Green with black stripe BMW to RED acewell
- Earth: Brown BMW to BLACK acewell
- Tacho: Black BMW to YELLOW acewell
- Speedo: I used the Acewell S11 speedo drive which wasn’t supplied. It replaces the original drive in the back of the gearbox and wires to a dongle which has GREEN and PURPLE wires.
Researching this I found that there are many Acewell wiring diagrams on the net for the various models. Whilst there are many similarities, they bafflingly sometimes switch colours for various functions so make sure you are looking at a wiring diagram for your model. BMW is very consistent across the various models- Earth is always brown, live power RED, switched power green with black or blue stripe etc.
Motogadget M-Lock Keyless Ignition
As I have deleted the original instrument panel I now had no ignition switch. A neat solution to this problem for custom builds is the Motogadget M-Lock. it’s basically an RFID switch. The packaging for this unit is very basic with essentially no instructions. The manual is online and I have attached it here.
The M-Lock RFID unit can be mounted anywhere but you can’t have conductive material between it and the keyfob (metal). The fob will work through plastic however. I elected to mount the unit on the right front steering head strut as shown. The device has three wires:
- Red (constant power from a RED BMW line via the fuse provided in the kit)
- Black (earth to a BROWN BMW line)
- Brown (the switch which goes to the switch input of the supplied relay-pin 86)
The other pins of the relay form the switch for the main vehicle ignition. Unlike the keyed ignition which has 2 or 3 on positions depending on the model, the M-Lock is either on or off so you have to combine all the “on” wires from the original ignition into one. On the wiring harness these are a bunch of wires with black connectors which went into the back of the original instrument panel as shown. They are in the top left of the wiring diagram called “Ignition switch”.
Basically I connected the BMW solid green, solid grey and yellow with wires together and attached them to pin 30 of the relay and live power (RED) to pin 87 and pin 85 to earth (BROWN). I used a relay connector instead of the little spade connectors supplied. I think for the price these kind of parts should have been part of the kit.
- Relay Pin 86- input from BROWN wire on M-Lock unit
- Relay pin 87- input from RED power line on harness
- Relay pin 85 – earth to BROWN wire on BMW harness
- Relay pin 30 – power to all the wires from old ignition switch (GREEN, GREY, Yellow with white stripe. I believe some (US) models also have a green with grey stripe wire which should also get connected here.
I cut the wires to the appropriate length so I could mount the relay next to the flasher relay on the frame.
Integrated Indicators
I have used the Kellerman machined integrated turn signals. On the front they double as a running light and indicator and on the back they are tail light/ brake light/ indicator. They are well constructed and look good in matte black. These were actually very easy to wire in. The use a small box and the instructions specifically say that attempting to wire directly to the lights will cause them to malfunction. Connections are as follows (these are onto the separate subframe harness which then plugs into the main harness):
Front:
- Indicator Wire BLUE with RED or BLACK stripe to the yellow wire of indicator box
- Headlight wire YELLOW to the White wire on indicator box
- Earth BROWN to the Black wire on the box
Rear:
- Indicator wires and earth as above
- Tail light wire Grey with black stripe to the blue wire on indicator box
- Brake light Green with red stripe to the RED wire on the indicator box
Flasher-gate
After wiring these in I had a terrible time getting them to actually flash. They came on, but solid orange. I immediately thought I knew the solution to the problem- I needed an LED specific (load independent) flasher relay. I went to the local electronics shop and got one BUT! it didn’t work… I was confused. So ensued many different solutions including various relays, wiring in resistors into the circuits etc. Eventually I found a relay which worked perfectly (the red NARTA relay pictured here). I am still baffled about why some LED specific relays didn’t work and only one appears to but the system now works (without resistors).
General and Harness Refurb
All the connections discussed above where soldered and then covered with heat-shrink wrap. At various stages through the process the wiring harness was placed back on the bike to get a feel for how long various wires needed to be to get connectors to land where I wanted them. I also exchanged the old ceramic fuses for more modern inline car fuses as shown.
After everything was wired a test run was done before re-wrapping the harness. Everything was wired in with the plugs removed from the cylinders. I tested all functions including cranking the engine on the starter, neutral switch, brake light switches, all the light and indicator controls etc.
When I was satisfied that I had the wiring right I applied some loops electrical wrap at key points on the harness to keep all the bundles tight and then wrapped the harness with an adhesive cloth look tape.
