are wiring harnesses standard

[Guest]

Silly Newbie Question:

Are wiring harnesses standard or are they custom made for each bike?

While pulling my ignition switch I noticed the wiring has lots of spade connectors covered with rubber and plastic connectors behind the headlight, many do not not seem to be connected to anything at all. Doesn't look very pretty.

Is a wiring harness a standard piece for almost all bikes or would I need to search for an old one or maybe make one by hand (if such a thing is possible) ?

[Steve]

You are correct, it's not "pretty" behind the headlight.

Not only are harnesses "bike-specific", they are also "model year-specific".

As an example, your '79 850 is very unique. It does not even share a harness with an '80 850, although the '80 850 shares a harness with an '81 850 (The G model only, not the GL), as well as the same years 1000G.

There are several individual connections behind the headlight, but most of them are bullets, not spades, so apparently someone has been in there before you.

That is all part of the inspection and clean-up that you need to do to the electrical system, so take a good look at what's there to see what all needs to be done to restore good function. Pictures might help a bit.

.

[posplayr]

Even though there are a plethora of wiring harnesses produced by an array of different designers, Suzuki did at least strong arm the designers to maintain what would seem to be a set of corporate standards for wire colors. So the only time you will see that there is a change in wiring color is when there was a major change in the electrical design for example: a single fuse, multiple fusebox, and alternator (GSXR) and beyond. But even those changes were within the same original color structure of the original so to some degree the color coding of the newer is backward compatible with the original.

[koolaid_kid]

Spade connectors are a common replacement for the bullet connectors that Suzuki used.