Denise asked me to help fit a new shock, and we decided to have a crack at fixing the fuel light while we had the bike suspended.
She'd tell you that her fuel light worked - it was on all the time - that's working. Except after 5 years of successfully using distance calculations she finally got stranded on a remote stretch near Bowen last year. With the variability of fuel quality in remote areas it's amazing she'd manage for so long. Her bike now has now done over 180,000 and it's the first time she has been stranded with an empty fuel tank.
We used the 0197jones ladder trick like I did when I changed my fan. We had it up on stands but you could cable tie the front brake and just lift the back up while someone took the weight with tie downs. With the shock removed we took it up until the wheel was just off the ground.
Sprocket told me that he'd taken the fuel pumps out of 06+SWB models before without having to remove the swingarm. 0197jones posted that with his earlier model it couldn't quite be extracted. You can see on the pic below that the late model swingarm has a dimple in it. Maybe that makes all the difference. I wasn't aware when extracting it that I was using that space, but I did need to remove the dipstick.
OK, once we had drained the fuel and disconnected the electrical connector and undone the nuts we got to the part in the manual about the fuel pump remover tool. I tried delicately with a screwdriver and then called Sprocket. He said he just levered it around with a screwdriver keeping it as even as possible. Worked a treat. I'm going to buy the remover tool for when I change the filters in mine. The screwdriver left a couple of little nicks on the inside of the pump end-plate.
To extract the pump took quite a few twists. I hadn't seen one before and had to work out what was snagging in each place. Mainly it was the pressure regulator.
I was planning on using Sprocket's repair with a bit of Fuel line split down the middle and put around the wires. When we got there there were two wires rubbed through. One was the power to the pump so it was close to failure.
Rays posted up a pic of a genuine fuel pump wire repair kit (that included the part number) I'd got a couple of those in for the shop and we ended up using one of them. The new wiring has a plastic mesh sleeve over the wires so they don't rub against the metal bracket. It also has an internal connector that would let you change individual wires.
We pulled the pump apart (the filters were well used - big globs came out of the canister filter). The manual said to push the plug with the wires on it out. I had to give it a good tap with a punch. We cleaned it up and when we went to install the plug with the new harness we found we could push it out without effort. I thought it must be for the wrong model, but the old one was the same. We tried again with a little less grease on the o-rings on the connector, and I pushed it home with a small screw driver. It still didn't take a lot of force to dislodge it. The weight of the fuel must push it home.
I'd taken a pic of the pin-outs from the external connector so I could put the wires back in the right place. The old connector is needed with the new sub-harness, and you would have to take the connector off in any case to fit it through the hole in the pump. The connector was held to the frame with a stupid cable tie with a pimple on it. I couldn't get the pimple out of the hole in the frame without risking damage to the connector. I cut the tie off and left the junction part attached to the pimple. That way I could just cable tie through the hole in the old junction.
When putting the shock in I made the mistake of feeding the reservoir below the wiring harness - it needs to be above. It took a bit of fiddling to get it above the wiring without removing the shock.
