Hacking a GSXR ignition

I am in the middle of a streetfighter project and I ran into a little issue... I swapped my front-end out for a 92' GSXR1100 setup with USD fork tubes and 4 nicer 4 piston calipers.

The problem I'm having is trying to mount my ignition. The KAW ignition module won't fit into the GSXR top triple due to physical constraints.

I picked up a GSXR ignition module /w/ 2 keys, BUT it doesn't have enough leads!!! My KAW ignition has 7 leads, and the GSXR has only 4. What are the necessary marked leads to use? What do the others do? Will I lose some function by swapping? Is it even possible to use?

Any info. is appreciated, I want to take my black beauty on a test run this weekend!!!

Bwhahaha what a miserably difficult question to answer especially since you didn't note the colors of the Kaw leads...

ONE will be power in from the main fuse... probably a bigger white wire.

You will have a blue. That subcircuit is what your headlight runs off of and your brake light circuit.

You will have a brown. That is what your turn signals/marker lamps/any aux lighting circuit like emergency flashers.

You will have a red and that is the running lamp in your tail light.

There may be a black wire going over the the right switchgear and into the kill switch. Can't recall color for sure but this wire is what triggers your solenoid via the kill switch/start button and powers your coils as it comes out yellow/red after the kill switch on a separate wire.

There may be a smaller white wire. I can't remember the function.

There is either an orange/green or green/orange... I can remember the function.

If you are worried about losing functions, you obviously will if you don't do some splicing with the wiring using the Suz switch. Two of the switched circuits; I think the red and blue are going through smaller fuses back near the battery box. The brown may not be fused... I would have to check a wiring diagram. I can't recall. I don't think the little white and green/orange (or orange/green) are all that important since I can't recall what they go to.

To figure out what to do, first understand what the wires on the kaw switch do. Put a 12V source on the fat WHITE wire and turn the key to on. Check the output of all of the other wires. If there is some other position on the switch, again, check for voltage. This is important because if you have an accessory position on the switch, some of those wires off the switch may come hot only when in that position. Once you know what is hot when you turn the key on, then you can do the same test with the Suz switch. Once you figure out what comes hot, you will need to gang some of the subcircuits; that is, combine them keeping in mind the constraints of the fused circuits. If they are 10A circuits, the wiring and connectors may not like having multiple circuits combined. I would not put the brake light and rear running lamp in the same circuit. It might also be advisable to stick the coils and headlight on their own relays.

The problem is workable BUT if you had to ask how to work it, it will take some thought and education as it isn't all that simple... You also didn't mention what functions your streetfighter project you wanted to keep... You might make a list of all electrical stuff first and figure out the draw of that component... bulbs, horn, etc. to help in balancing the loads out in the new subcircuits you will create with the Suz switch. It might be easier to build some sort of adapter plate to hold the Kaw switch...

Thank you WG!!!

This is BY FAR the best advice I've gotten regarding this issue. Most have told me that it's not possible! Keeping in mind all of the separate sub-circuits; if I start splicing things together, am I in any danger of frying anything other than a fuse or two?

FYI, I do have some basic knowledge of electronics. I can follow Ohm's law and figure out proper resistance and capacitance for a line. What I am not familiar with is the specific Kaw diagram...

I'd like to keep as much functionality as I can... It would be a shame to lose function to preserve appearance!

I am not really sure how many fused sub-circuits your bike originally had. On my 79 and 80 shafties, they have two subcircuits. I think they are fused with 10A fuses. This implies that no more than 10A current should be on those circuits; not so much because of the fuses, otherwise, you could just pop in 30A fuses. If you stuck in higher value fuses, your wiring and connectors would become your fuses...

Ok, look at ohms law... the 12V is a given pretty much in this equation as a plug in value. Since the fuses are rated for current (AMPS), you need to add up the wattage of the stuff that is running on the circuit. Say, the headlight circuit... blue wire... (BLUE subcircuit). Headlamp hi-beam = 65W (example), Brake light (23W from 1157 bulb). Ok together 88W. 88W/12V = 7.3A. This is about all you want to load on a circuit designed for MAX 10A. The wires on the headlight and brake light circuit are probably 18 ga. and the connectors rated correspondingly. If you don't believe this is as close as you want to get on this circuit, just open up your headlight shell and have a good look at the connector where the red/yellow and red/black connector to the headlight as these are the hi and lo beam wires hung off the blue circuit. This connector is generally partly melted. You can't really gang another bulb or anything else on the blue subcircuit. The brown subcircuit will have a little more room for addition EXCEPT for the darn horn which is hung off it. When that thing is blown, I suspect there is pretty high current draw for as long as it is blown so a possible fix might be to run it off a separate relay.

Thinking about this problem more, I would put a 6 fuse fuse holder on the bike with the MAIN fuse rating capable of 30A (must have at least six slots for fuses. The other fused circuits, I would keep at 10A and utilize current wiring (this would be for the turn signals, emergency/aux lighting, etc). I would keep the two subcircuits that power this stuff pretty much the same but I would run the headlight off a relay, the coils off a relay and the horn off a relay. This would use the remain three fused slots.

The relay works like this... you put power, directly from the fuse box TO the relay. Out of the relay a wire will go to the gizmo... to the coils or the headlight switch in your right switch gear or to the horn. The old wire that had previously powered the gizmo will become the trigger wire for the gizmo. The relay will also require a ground. You can read about the coil repowering mod on our website at www.wgcarbs.com - I will eventually get around to putting it back on this webiste in the articles section. I think you will have to take the approach of redoing your fused subcircuits because I doubt that your current fused subcircuits can handle getting doubled-up loads tossed on the connectors, fuses or wiring.

I'm not an expert on bike electrical systems so this may all be meaningless. On a car the key takes a constant 12V+ and redistributes it to ignition 1, ignition 2, accessory, and when turned all the wayu foward to the starter (at least it used to but we wont get into new car nightmares). Ignition 1 is hot during crank as it supplies power to the coils, ignition 2 drops power during crank, and accessory drops power during crank and provides power when the key is on or in the accessory position. My bike has an accessory position as I suspect yours does. It allows you to turn the hazard lights on and take the keys with you if you break down etc. I assume it pretty much powers everything EXCEPT the ignition coils. Since the power to the key likely comes from one fused power source off the battery, you could safely combine a few circuits AT the key without rewiring anything (I'm assuming it works like a car, this is why all this may be meaningless). So if the bike has multiple circuits that perform the same function, like accessory or aux ignition you could combine the like circuits. Does the GSXR ignition have the accessory position? That could account for the 2 less wires right there? I am going to try and dig out my wiring diagram for my KZ-1000 (1978) and see how it works. You will also need a diagram of the GSXR ignition, or you will have to test it. I don't know if the colors are obvious (like red is the battery wire). You can test the ignition uninstalled with an ohm meter of course. It's totally possible and shouldnt be very difficult to figure out anyway. Worst case senario you would have to do as George says and add a relay or 2 with some extra fuses.

Ok, I checked a few things. The accessory position is called "park". When the key is in that position is powers only the parking lights and turn signals/hazard lights. It turns on the parking lights regardless of the headlight switch position. The 2 white wires go the fused battery source, they combine after the 6 pin connector so they are really the same wire. If this GSXR ignition does not have the park/accessory position this will be really simple Your GSXR switch may only have one battery input wire so you would be combining the 2 white wires together, that only leaves one extra wire. I don't think you mentioned what year/model your bike is? Yours may be a little different than mine. I have no running/parking lights unless I turn them on with the headlight switch or turn the key to park. This may be different on newer bikes that don't have the ability to turn off the headlights. Looking at how the ignition switch works between a few different diagrams this manual has that will make a small difference. Let me know what bike we are talking about, and what positions that GSXR ignition switch has.

It would help to have a GSXR wiring diagram (a good, readable, color-coded one).

Cool,

Thanks for all of the replies so far... I'm supposed to be getting a GSXR wiring diagram here shortly, I'll post as soon as it hits my inbox.

If that doesn't work, I have access to a vm this weekend. I'll run a dummy 12v source through the ignition and record the results at different key positions... And include pictures!

BTW, my bike is the infamous 83' KZ1100 LTD. I say infamous because this particular model was only made for one year. It has been a *major* P.I.T.A.!!! Finding some of the trim pieces and especially the gauge cluster has been nearly impossible. I had to modify a vulcan's gauge cluster, though this may not work anymore since I switched to the GSXR front end. I think that the new front wheel is too small for the way the speedo is geared.

I feel your pain on that one.. the 84 550 LTD has very very few mentions anywhere.. the insurance company couldn't even find it in their computers.

Many of the parts catalogs only have brief mentions too.. usually have to find parts based on the '83 model :pinch:

Good luck with the hack!

Sorry guys, no official wiring diagram from Suzuki

This morning they told me how it wouldn't be a problem to fax over a copy of the diagram. Now they're trying to make me buy the schematics for the entire bike for $49.99. The real kick in the a#$ is the fact that they told me it would take 4-6 weeks.

SUZUKI SUCKS!!!

If I owned a Suzuki, this would basically mean that I'm SOL.

There's gotta be a GSXR site somewhere with the schematics online.

I didnt find one in my quick search, but maybe on a suzuki forum someone could help you out. Can always test it with an ohm meter. I'm still curious, does the GSXR ignition have a "park/acc" position or is it just off and run?