[flytrap]

Probably not a good idea to drink beer while fiddling around with your new CTX. Tonight I decided to put the Battery Doc harness on the battery. I pulled the first piece of plastic that allows you access to the battery and then proceeded to simply unscrew the bolt on the positive terminal. I dropped the bolt and it vanished into plastic shroud land. %*$#@ So what the ****? I finessed the inner shroud off and then started to pull off the side shroud. Tabs, clips, rubbery thingies galore. Lots of pushing, pulling and bending. Finally, I pulled the side shroud off enough to see the bolt. Retrieved it, buttoned everything back up and then installed the Battery Doc harness. As I was putting the final piece of plastic back on I dropped one of the plastic pins. It vanished into the void of plastic shroud land. Screw it. The good news: the Battery doc works fine. Tomorrow I'll drop by a local shop and see if I can buy some plastic pins. FYI. The people who drew the figures in the manual were likely on some drugs. It is totally worthless. Next adventure: figure out how tap some power for my photon blaster led lights. Any suggestions?

 

[bob]

#1 - don't drink and pull plastic at the same time?

#2 - I prefer to minimize connections directly on the battery terminals so I will have one connection for my battery maintainer (sounds like you already have that one). The only other connector to the battery I make is to my fuse panel to provide power to gadgets that is isolated from the factory wires and turned on via a relay by the ACC of the bike. I recommend never getting power for stuff from anyplace other than directly from the battery in this way (ok to use bike signals or wires for relay triggers since that is only a few milli-amps at most). I will be doing just that in the next week or so, or maybe tomorrow. I'll be putting together a document with a diagram and pictures I hope, and post it on this forum when I get it.

For now I jotted down this diagram and scanned it in. Hope it's clear enough to read. Any questions just ask.

Run ground wire from any/all add-ons to the nearest good ground point. This diagram covers where power comes from. The only bike wire/plug/pin to tap into is the ACC (bottom left) in the front (or rear) option plug. The electrical diagram in the service manual does show what wire color this is. You can find the front option plug location in the SM diagram on page 1-24. It looks to me that it is in a holder just behind and to the right side of the ignition switch under the top shelter. Unless you have the non-USA model with the grip heaters it should be the only 4 pin plug in that holder. If you do have the Honda factory grip heaters it will be the bottom plug in that holder.

For a good ground point I have been known to use a household AC panel grounding bar with 6-8 positions and run one 12ga wire from the battery neg terminal to that bar and run all my added stuff grounds to that bar.

 

[Kookopelli]

4-pin option connector

Bob, I finally found that **** connector. Why they put it where they did is a mystery to me. Anyway, it has a dummyend plugged into it that has no pins in it. I guess I have to get some pins from Honda to fit in it?

 

[bob]

Somewhere here recently someone posted the part numbers and brand of the pins that go in those plugs. They weren't ordered from Honda but from another company that sells connectors and special plugs/pins, etc. The dummy plugs are really just missing the pins inside and I was thinking of ordering some pins, male and female, for the two plugs I found with dummy plugs. I'll have to find that post and save it on my computer as a reference.


Found it... HERE


-

 

[cheeken]

just a bunch of bad luck huh.

 

[ShadowRider]

Next adventure: figure out how tap some power for my photon blaster led lights. Any suggestions?

I think you are the only other person I've seen with Photon Blasters! I have those and the P3 Lights, and ran everything through the accessory connector that runs under the seat. I just fished a set of wires along the left side of the bike using a stiff piece of wire, without having to remove much plastic at all. I mounted the controller module against the left side of the open area where the forks go down to the wheel, and used the zip ties at several points to hold the wires to the existing brake cables. It turned out to be a pretty clean installation, though I think I need to add a loom to make sure nothing catches on the wires.

Let me know if you need any more advice on this, since I have installed those on two bikes now.

 

[bob]

Since I've been under the plastic now and found the option plugs with unused circuits that are already fused for me I am adjusting my view of running ALL my own wire. My preference for using an isolated power panel stems from the situation of dealing with a bike that has no available source for the desired power without tapping into an existing circuit being used by something else already. That is what is bad IMO.

With this bike there are a few "options" available in form of two (or more) option plugs with available pins. Ok, you do have to add the pins in the dummy plug covering these connectors. But these are available to use as long as you don't have the option they were intended for. Steve found the plug under the seat. There is another, the front option plug just next to the ignition switch under the top shelter. It has wire and fuses already for ACC, Hi beam driving lights, Lo beam fog lights, and ground. I would consider this a perfect source for your driving lights. The driving light and fog light wires are even already tied into the hi/lo beam switch controller to come on at the right time! I'll be ordering the pins to go in the dummy plug for all of this and have already used the ACC line there to power my GPS power cord. When I get around to deciding on driving lights I'll be using that wire in this plug for those. As long as the extra lighting is LED there are no worries about overload since that is what these wires are intended for.

Now the only items I need to run my own wire for is the 15 amp 12v socket I already put under the seat and the extra loud, high db horn I want to add (once I decide which one to buy). I plan to also add another 10 amp 12v socket inside the right saddlebag and I'll be using the existing connector under the seat for that one.