Starter (4P) Connector Meltdown

There is a second connector which often melts and causes havoc. This is the 4P starter relay connector. It is located directly below the 3P ACG connector discussed here . It plugs into the top of the main fuse box and has four wires running into it. The two wires we are concerned with are the red wire and the red/white wire. These two wires carry the current demanded by the entire bike. Remember that current through resistance equals heat, hence this connector often melts. Again, separate this connector from the fuse box and check for meltdown in the connector. If your connector has been doomed, you will need to scrounge up a similar connector from a salvage shop. It is a common Honda connector, so this should not be too difficult. Heat accelerates corrosion, and corrosion (i.e. resistance) increases heat, therefore the two male lugs within the top of the fuse box which accommodates the red and red/white wires may be very corroded. You absolutely must scrape, sand, pick, and essentially do whatever you must do to return these lugs back to their original clean, shiny condition. If you do not do this, the following modification will be rendered ineffectual.

Look down at the top of the fuse box at the two lugs where the red and red/white wires entered. You will see a shunting bar running from the left lug to the right lug. All this bar does is connect the red wire to the red/white wire. Current from the regulator flows through the red/white wire into the connector. Here it goes one of two places. If the battery needs a charge, the current flows through the 30 ampere fuse directly to the battery. Otherwise, the current simply flows through the shunt back out the red wire to supply the bike's entire electrical needs, including headlight, running lights and computer. There is absolutely no need for all this heat-generating current to even pass through this connector. With a simple splice, the current can be passed from one wire to the other before it enters the connector, eliminating the connector meltdowns.

(Before continuing, remove the battery and the battery box in order to gain the access to the wires you will need). Pop the red and red/white wire's lugs out of the 4P connector. Beginning about an inch and a half from the end of the red wire, strip about a half inch of the insulation off. Next, cut about an inch and a quarter of the red/white wire off and strip about a half inch of insulation off. Twist the stripped portion of the red/white wire around the exposed portion of the red wire and solder the two together. Button up the connection with electrical tape and you are almost finished. As before with the ACG crimp connections, flow a small amount of solder into the crimp connection of the red wire. Then pop the red wire's lug back into the connector. You can either put the lug back into it's original location within the connector, or if you are like myself and did not pay attention to what went where upon disassembly, you may snap it into the now-vacant slot where the red/white wire once resided. Remember, it does not matter which of the two slots the red wire enters, since both lugs are connected inside the fusebox anyway. Don't forget to pack the female lug with dielectric grease before attaching the connector to the fuse box. This keeps moisture, which accelerates corrosion, out of the connection. Corrosion in this or any one of many other connectors can bring to birth erratic electrical system gremlins. In fact, the next rainy day or before, your fifteen-year-old Turbo would benefit from your disconnecting all electrical connections and packing with dielectric grease. You can check for corrosion, and the act of separating the connections has the effect of breaking any corrosion which may have started. I have known many hair-pulling electrical gremlins to be traced back to a corroded connector in this bike. Catch it before it catches you .

The benefit of the 4P connector modification is not in what is gained, but in what is lost. After the modification, the only current which actually flows through the red wire into the fuse box is only that which is either necessary to charge the battery, or that which must flow from the battery to supply the bike's electrical needs during periods when electrical supply may not keep up with electrical demand (i.e., idling). For the record, this modification is not an invention I concocted, but rather was originally developed by Honda as an attempt to address similar concerns in the problematic '84-'87 GL1200 charging systems.

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