Another Happy Switch Gear
Just got my delivery of the switches from Farnell. They are the correct ones although they come attached to a little pcb which is easily removed to reveal the contacts. They seem a better design to me and were pretty easy to install with a bit of fiddling and a careful bit of soldering. So it would seem that if you order from Farnell they are in stock!
Just want to say a big thankyou to Dunk for doing that research and locating some switches on the right side of the atlantic.. (and of course to Aiden for the original refs and piccies).
I came accross this thread a few days ago sometime after my left indicator switch had gorne sarff. Not having anything resembling a warranty left on my 1150GS (2K) I found to my horror that I was looking at upwards of 150 squids for a new one and not a single second-hand one to be found for love nor money from any of the usual sources.
I ordered a few of those replacement micro-switches from Farnell last week and after frying the first one (well it only seemed polite to) I got the second one all nicely soldered up and installed. Switch gear is now back together flashing left like a goodn'.
So to anyone else in the same predicament I'd say go for it, if you can work reasonably quickly with a fine soldering iron you should be able to avoid frying the switch but it's worth having a spare or two on hand just in case the worst happens. Other than that the longest part of the job (as is often the case) is getting the switch gear apart and back together again. A little bonus is that the switches seem a better build than the beamer ones and once all back together give you a more positive click to let you know there's someone at home.
Having never taken a switch gear apart I was a bit nervous about undertaking this and would have appreciated knowing exactly what was going to be involved. For anyone feeling the same way, here's what I did.
Determining if the switch really is the problem:
- Check hazards do the right thing.
- Dismantle switch gear and locate the indicator micro switch (see previous pics).
- Use a sharp knife to expose some copper in the wires going to the switch.
- Switch the ignition on and bridge accross the wires (if it's the switch that's gone the indicator should come on when you do this).
Removing the offending switch:
- Open up the switch gear (undo the screws, pull out the section with the buttons on it and gently prize out the buttons, I think the horn wants to come first).
- Separate the switch from the white collar (see previous pics) (Note: someone had filled my switch collars with silicone, this all came out with the help of a fine tipped philips head screwdriver.)
Installing the Farnell micro-switch:
- Remove the rubber shroud that the switch comes in
- As quick as you can, desolder the little pcb the switch is mounted on, a friend to pull the switch away or one of those sucky solder extracting gizmos will help get this done. Try not to fry the switch while doing this i.e. work quickly.
- Snap off the little retaining legs/clips that hold the switch onto the pcb (these don't fit inside the collar)
- Take a little time to note how the switch fits into the collar, (there are grooves on the inside of the collar and stems on the bottom of the switch that fit like they were made for eachother, only force it when you've figured out how this goes).
- Connect the wires to the terminals on the bottom of the switch (I did this by first soldering some short tails onto the bottom of the switch and then soldering the tails onto the beamer wires - I also used heatshrink to cover and somewhat seal both sets of solder joins).
- Once the joins are made switch on the ignition and see if the switch activates the indicator, if it doesn't, get another switch and do the soldering again - less cack-handedly this time.
- Once you have a working switch connected, put the switch gear back together (since it was my first time, what I did was dismantle it and put it all back straight away before doing anything just to try it while the dismantle was still fresh in my mind). The only other thing to bear in mind is routing the little wires, there isn't much room for that and they do need to be out the way, a helpful thing to note is that there is a little cutout in the bottom of the white collar for the tails to come out of, you may need to bend the terminals to do this but get the wires coming out through that gap so as to get the switch/collar seated flat right into it's holder.
- Put the mirror back on and make a cup of tea.
That's it. My only wonder at this point is how waterproof this little switch is going to be without it's rubber shroud (may look into that if the need arises).
Thanks again to Dunk and Aiden for the real info..
