Ground Spiders & Gen II Reliability - Bullet Proof ?

[Proteus1952]

For the second time in five great years of owning and riding my 2010 Gen 2, I recently went thru the arduous task of pulling off a bunch of plastic so that I could carefully examine the eight Ground Connectors on the bike. So up front, I offer Kudos and sincere thanks to the various highly competent forum members who have posted so much great advice and graphics so that a barely skilled wrench turner like myself could actually affect a proper repair. Each time before making the repair, I searched and reviewed everything I could find to get up to speed for the repair. On the first go around in 2015, I was even brave enough to cut and solder one of the connectors and it must still be good because on this second repair I didn’t touch it and one of the other corroded connectors must have been the root of the electrical gremlins. I also switched from the dialectric grease to the Noalox recommended by “rbentnail”.

So, my point is this: Should I just resign myself to performing this PITA routine on an annual basis.

I did see the annual routine recommendation in one of the posts that I reviewed. None of the posters recommended replacement of the actual connectors although I did see that someone was making and offering for sale a hand-made harness adapter, the installation of which is likely way beyond my skill level.

Thus far I’ve never been stranded on this bike and sure hope that is not in my future because several times a year I head out to the boonies on my own for week long adventures. Having wild and weird electrical issues out in the middle of west Texas would positively spoil my day. Oh yea, each of the past two failures happened in the middle of a dang hot Texas summer with the repairs thus being made in my even hotter garage. I’m getting too old for that stuff. I count my lucky stars that the failures each occurred very near home and each time I was able to ride back.

Comments/Suggestions please.

 

[JamesK]

I cut and soldered ALL the spiders and separately grounded all but the two ECU spiders back in 2009 when one of mine failed. This way I will never need to do this job again or worry about it causing me an issue.

 

[RossKean]

I don't think the hand-made harness (Brodie) is still available. The earlier Gen II bikes ('06-'08) were especially bad but I haven't heard a lot about problems with later ones. (Perhaps under-reported??) With my high mileage '07, I had the S4 recall done and soldered S6 after it failed. I had a non-spider ground fault in a separate connector which was reported by a couple of other owners as well. No issues other than that and I did not "maintain" the connectors on a regular basis. (Recently sold the bike with 187,000 miles and no electrical issues in the last 4 years of ownership.)

What happened with your 2010? My 2011 is OK so far but only has 50,000 miles or so on it.

 

[lnewlf]

I simply attached separate 12 gauge ground wires to the frame for S4 aand S6 years ago and don't expect to ever have a problem...

 

[Proteus1952]

RossKean - "What happened with your 2010? My 2011 is OK so far but only has 50,000 miles or so on it"

Each failure exhibited the typical symptoms: partially on (dim) turn signals, non-functioning horn, windshield, lights and other dash anomalies. Bike now has 32,000 miles and had about 15K at the 2015 repair.

 

[rbentnail]

You don't say which of the spiders you "fixed" but I'd think, if you are worried about any others just go ahead and "do" them. I soldered 2 of them, S4 and S6, at the same time, the others are on the winter maintenance things to do. I also get the hesitation- not everyone is a wrench guy- but you're experienced with plastics removal and spider repair- the rest are no different other than which are power & which are signal. Signal ones don't get grounded. I never saw the need for additional grounding if the spider wires are soldered together- the ground bus isn't the problem, the metal spider-jumper is the problem.

 

[Harald]

Your 2010 should have the spider problem "fixed" by Yamaha from the factory. Although there have still been 2010 and later FJR's affected by spider bites, the numbers have been very small compared to us 06 to 09 owners. There's a couple pinned threads at the top of this forum section that talk about spiders in great detail and I've tried to track the number of reported failures.

As far as spider maintenance, I highly recommend inspecting, cleaning and applying dielectric grease to all spiders on the bike along with other non sealed connectors. After my S7 spider failure on my 2007 FJR almost 10 years ago, I cut S7 off and soldered all the wires together. All remaining spiders and other connections were cleaned and dielectric grease applied. I've had no other issues since then despite racking up 136,000 miles now and a lot of it was riding in rain (I ride all year in Seattle). No connector has been greased again unless I had it apart and felt generous with my grease supply.

While helping someone grease their spiders recently, I realized that perhaps not everyone is greasing their spiders correctly. With the cap off, they globbed a dab of grease ontop of the spider and reinstalled the cap. This would be almost useless in protecting the connection. What you must do is similar to packing a wheel bearing. With clean contacts, repeatedly force grease down into the sockets so that the connector is packed full of grease. Then reinsert the spider, smear some more grease on top and then clip the cap back on. You now have the contact surfaces protected from the intrusion of water/dirt/etc that will cause corrosion, higher resistance, heating and consequently even higher resistance until failure occurs.

 

[Proteus1952]

Harald - Excellent suggestion to treat the connectors in same manner as a wheel bearing. The same thought occurred to me when last doing the repair but I didn't follow through. I think I will repeat the treatment next fall in cooler weather and give them all the "wheel bearing" treatment.

Thanks to all for the comments. Safe riding!!!

 

[SkooterG]

I was fortunate enough to get the last 'Brodie Harness' for my 2009. Installed it and in 130,000 miles no issues whatsoever. It's not ever in my thought process. Now, my used and abused 180,000 mile 2004 FJR has all kinds of little niggles these days including electrical and wiring harness connectors.......