Pageing Anvil: need your expertise or experience (also on Tech Board)

Sure thing. I'm going to do this from memory though so I may amend it later but here goes:

You'll need butt splices, wire of the proper gauge (the wiring for the switchgear ranges from 18 to 22ga. but I went with all 18ga just to make it a little easier) and a decent quality crimper, stripper and cutter, some method of marking the wire (masking tape and sharpie works well enough) a heat gun, electrical tape, zip-ties, some light gauge steel wire .040 ss safety wire works great) various sizes of shrink-tubing and a lubricant like dish detergent. You may also want some spiral wrap. I highly recommend the butt splices that have shrink-tubing and sealing goo already on them rather than dealing with shrink-tubing each individual wire splice. The shrink tubing will be used at the ends where the wire looms go into the switchgear housings. If you have a friend who's comfortable doing wiring (even someone who's just good at installing car stereos) then I'd also have them on hand.

First of all, disconnect the negative terminal on your battery and secure it. Now remove the stock bars. Be careful with the controls and your tank paint. I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir on this but I'd feel remiss for not mentioning it. Then, install the drag bars temporarily in position so you can measure how much extra bundle length you're going to need. Once you know that you can begin the next step. Remember to allow for a 6" service loop that you can coil and tuck into the nacelle once you're finished terminating. So if you figure that you're going to need an extra 4" in length out of the bundle just to reach then make it ten overall. This gives you room to terminate outside of the nacelle and to work on things later should you have electrical issues.

Now open up the headlight nacelle. Inside you'll find the harness blocks and QD connectors that you'll use to reconnect later. The whole reason you even need to cut anything is because you can't fit those harness blocks through the bars. So take the harness and QD's and cut them about six inches from where they enter into the blocks. Don't cut them too close because you need a little length to work with. You can't strip and splice if the length coming out of the block is too short (though I can do it with less than an inch, it's a PITA). Then, strip the outer sheathing from the bundles to access the individual wires. Strip the whole length being careful not to cut the wires beneath. The easiest way is to cut along the length with scissors until you get to the switchgear and then just pull it aside and cut the length off. Now you have each wire exposed and ready to modify. This is where it gets slightly complicated. But it's not bad.

You're going to want to stagger your splices so that they run along the length of the wire bundle which will allow you to pull it through the bars without ending up with a big collection of splices in one spot. You'll end up with one of thise when you do the final termination to the harness blocks so you'll want to minimize that. You also want to take a measurement of where the riser and bar meet. You want to avoid having a butt-splice right at that joint as it may hang-up. So measure how long a butt splice is and mark them out on the wire. Again, leave a little room between them. Then, start your stagger cuts. once cut, run your shrink tubing over the bundle BEFORE you start attaching butt splices. Run it right up to the control housing and shrink in on there. This will protect from chafing where the wire exits the bar. In fact, two layers would be best. Now strip the wire ends and start attaching the extra lengths with butt-splices. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD REMEMBER TO CAREFULLY MARK WHICH WIRE IS WHICH BEFORE YOU PULL THEM INTO THE BARS because you will not be able to identify them once they're in there. Do it one at a time isolating each wire from the bundle. I used a little bit of masking tape and an ultra-fine sharpie which worked fine. Remember to stagger your flags like your splices though because you don't really want them all bunched up either.

Shrink the butt splices thoroughly with your heat gun and you now have solid, weatherproof runs. Once you have all of your wires lengthened and marked you can wrap safety wire tightly around the end and tape it up with electrical tape. Fish the wire though the bars, lube it up with soap and pull it through. It helps to have someone feeding the slack while you pull. The butt splices are strong too. The good 3M ones (available at Radio Shack) not only heat-shrink but also have a glue-like schmootz that they secrete when heated. Once done they're extremely difficult to pull apart so don't worry too much about pulling too hard.

Now that you've got the harness through, run some shrink tube up through where it EXITS the bars by the upper triple tree and all the way to where it enters the nacelle as an anti-chafe measure. Shrink it up leaving enough exposed wire to terminate. Now, match up your ends with the wires coming off of the harness-block, terminate with the same kind of butt-splice and coil up your loop. Repeat for the other side.

I hope that all makes sense. I wish I had taken pics to help. I'll try to upload a diagram or something though.