Rewiring the SevenEleven part 1 - The theory

I started off a few years ago with a few miles of GSX1100F wiring loom, including servo-operated adjustable windscreen, christmas lighting etc.
First I had only removed the wiring of all the bits I didn't need, which basically means stripping everything off that doesn't light the sparks at the right moment, prevent people crashing in from behind or make oncoming traffic blind at night.

I had quite some trouble making all the overlength wiring fit into the gap behind the headstock, so next thing I did was to shorten all wires which means disassemble the connectors, cut the wire at the desired length and solder the connector back on.

The result was pretty neat but problems came to arise. The many modifications had made the connectors a bit unstable which made the ignition cut out once in a while. Moving the wiring loom around would make the juice flowing again but I never found the real problem. Miraculously the last half year I didn't have any problems like that even when riding trough heavy rain a lot, maybe the corrosion had helped tightening the connections a bit... who knows?

Anyway... a while back I stumbled upon this article written by Tony Foale which inspired me to do it all over... from scratch.
I will summarize the article in my own words though the article itself is very clear.
The idea is to minimize the number of connectors between the power source (battery) and the coils. Every connector or switch increases the resistance and drops the voltage while we want the highest voltage possible to create a big fat spark.
Tony also does a good job of simplifying the wiring by separating ignition and lighting.

With this knowledge I started working to implement these basic ideas onto my bike. You should note...

- The coils are fed directly from the alternator/dynamo because there's the source for the highest voltage. They are switched by a low resistance relay and connected with thick wire. The mass of the coils are directly connected to the minus of the battery to create a very short current path.

- The mass for the front and rear lighting is connected to the frame to prevent having to run wires back to the battery and so keeping the wiring to a minimum.

- I've got my battery underneath the fueltank, a 7-core wire for use on trailers is guided to the front of the bike which should look very neat 'n tidy. I tried guiding it trough the left upper frame rail but there isn't enough space thanks to the very rough headstock casting.
Click image for full-size version

I took the alternator cover off to look for a place to connect the wire to the coils.
The orange wire feeds the rotor trough the brushes and output is generated trough the stator which is connected to the red wire.
The red wire is soldered, and you need to use a very hot soldering iron to get the heat in quickly... 60W is the minimum!

To the pictures of the finished result ->