It was a little over a week ago when I picked up my new paint job and put my bike back together. I managed to get a five minute ride in before the bad weather hit. The bike sat, waiting to be enjoyed for five days. Finally, on Sunday I woke up to a gorgeous day. My plan was to take my bike to our Sunday morning teaching series, but when I went to fire it up, the bike wouldn’t start. For some reason, the battery had drained and I didn’t have enough juice to get it started. So, it was another day of riding Heather’s Electra Glide.
I did get the bike running later that day and enjoyed riding it for a few days earlier this week. Still, something wasn’t right. The bike wasn’t starting right away, and it just seemed like the battery wasn’t staying fully charged. I realized on Tuesday that my low beam wasn’t working, and so I decided to take a look at the wiring.
As I played with some of the wiring sticking out of the neck of the frame, I tripped one of Harley’s wonderful breakers. It was then that I knew I had a problem.
Yesterday, with the help of a buddy, I pulled the main wiring harness out of the frame. What we found amazed both of us. There were so many nicks in the wires, bare spots and cracks, that it was a miracle the bike ran at all! In a few cases, wires were shorting out against the frame, overheating, and melting to other wires pressed tight to them. There were dozens of wires spliced into the frame.
Some of the changes were a result of me removing all the wires from my bars a few years ago. You see, I have custom bars on my bike, and I have no wires at all on them. My signal lights and high beam switch are behind my left leg. I have no front signal lights. I have no starter or emergency off button. However, many of the wires that once connected to those things were hiding in the frame. Along with those wires, there were other wires customized by the previous owner.
The previous owner, a friend of mine, had suggested when I bought the bike from him that I should invest in a new wiring harness. Some of the wires were getting brittle, and it was only a matter of time before they began to wear through. It was one of those “I should do that some time” things, but there were other more pressing matters to use my finances on, so the new wiring never happened.
As I pulled the harness out of the bike and began to run fresh, new wires to only the needed connections, I was reminded again how so much of motorcycling parallels the rest of life. As a minister, I’m inclined to think of the spiritual aspect of life, and my mind wandered there a little.
How is your spiritual wiring? Perhaps you first plugged in as a kid when your parents or grandparents dragged you off to some boring church service. Are you still using the same connections? If so, my guess is they’ve become brittle and there’s like a few exposed wires. Perhaps they’re shorting out the rest of the system. Perhaps they’re simply causing things to run a little rough.
Every once in a while it’s healthy to take another look at how you’re wired. You may not have to yank out the entire wiring harness, but maybe it’s time to replace a few wires, to make sure the connection to God is good. I began my spiritual journey 27 years ago. During that time, I have done a lot of rewiring. I still do.
What about you? Time to look at how you’re wired again?
