pretty soon im going to try wiring and firing the zx9 lump in my garage. I've got a full loom, the cdi, coils and a fuel pump, along with the haynes manual for the engine. Whats the best way to go apart getting it going? should i modify the loom i have, cut the unused bits out, roll them up, or get my head round it and do it frmo scratch?

any help or pointers appreciated...

I undid the bike loom and just used the wires I needed, extending/shortening as I went, you have to do a few mods if you want to use the car controls, ie indicator stalk, lights, hazards etc. Ive got a marked up diagram for most of it if its any use.

Gordon

I'm working on the electrics for my R1 at the moment and am doing it from scratch. It's not too hard, but probably more time consuming than modifying the old bike loom. I'm hoping that the results should be pretty tidy. I certainly pretty happy with the engine bay so far.

If you just want to test fire it, I wouldn't recomend modifying the loom at all, just plug what you have in and give it a blast.

Kingr

Joel, don't forget to earth that pesky green/grey wire coming from the ECU - that will disable all the kill switches except the 'in-gear' one. You will also need to wire in a 100ohm resistor (Tandy's) into the ignition-to-ECU wire as well.

If I was doing it again, I would either cut out all the used crap, or do it from scratch, as I've never been happy with my terribly muddled wiring.

Another thing I did was to get an A3 colour photocopy of the wiring diagram and laminate it, really useful with dirty fingers and I didn't have to keep the book mopen at the right page

right then, thanks for the pointers all. alan (wadders) says i can test the cdi on his engine, which is a good start. Plus he has a modified wiring diagram which i'll take a peek at. I think i will go thru and try to understand the loom, and then cut out the spare bits. This seems the best way to 'future-proof' the whole thing!

good idea on the A3 copy jasper, i'll do that as soon as i pull my finger out.

main trouble at the min is that a dont appreciate the full scope of the loom. So firstly im gonna just go thru and label the connectors, then trace any earths, then plan the feeds, then the fuel and radiator side of things, then give it a whirl.

Do bikes mind having no exhaust on them? my sierra engine seemed happy enough but someone said something about a device on the zx9 that puts air into the exhaust. is this relevant to anything?

again, thanks for your help guys.

I had no problems with running my bike engine with no exhaust, apart from it being very loud and when you 'blip' the throttle I got long blue flames out of the ports