So whats in the box so to speak?
2 cable ties, a shit load of stickers, 2 gell filled wire connectors (these are bloody awesome), 1 gell filled wire tap connector (again such a simple yet awesome design), a wiring loom, 2x 2-pole plug connectors and the XTRE unit.
Installing is pretty easy. I was a bit thrown back at first after reading the instructions and finding out that I had to cut a wire that leads to the ECU, but anyone with a little mechanical & electrical know how can install an XTRE in no time.
Firstly remove the 2 fairing pieces to expose the bolts holding the seat on. Remove the seat, steering dampner then the petrol tank. Having a second set of hands helps here as 1 person can hold the tank while you disconnect the fuel line and electrical connector running from the fuel pump.
Once you have removed all these pieces your should see something like this:
What you are now looking for is the big grey electrical connector on the left side of the bike:
Depress the catch on the grey plug and pull it apart. What you will see is 2 white plug protectors that need to be removed so we can remove 4 pins (the 2 center ones from each side of the plug):
The white plug protectors should just pull out. The female one will need to be pried out from below with a small screwdriver. The male protector can be pulled out with a set of pliers. When you remove these plug protectors note down the orientation they are installed into the plug halves:
Next we need to remove the 2 center pins from both sides of the grey plug. To do this, get a small electrical screwdriver and gently press on the pin while lifting it up. This should lift it up out of the small latch and allow the pin to be pulled out by the wire at the rear of the plug.
As you can see that each side of the grey plug has two exposed wires and pins, Black/Yellow & White/Yellow on the right and Green/Red & Black on the left. Insert the Black/Yellow & Yellow/White wires into the 2-pole male plug supplied and the Green/Red & Black wires into the 2-pole female plug supplied. Test to see if the pins have locked into place by gently pulling the wire from the 2-pole plugs. If they do pull out you will need to spin the pin around 180 degrees and push it back into place so that it can latch in.
Install the 2 white plug protectors back in the 2 sides of the big grey plug (making sure they have the same orientation before we removed them). You should now see something like this:
Plug these two white connectors into the XTRE.
Now we need to get to the ECU so we can tap the supplied wiring harness into it. To do so remove the passenger seat/cowl and then the fairing piece that sits behind your arse. The ECU which has 2 large connectors (black and grey) should now be visible. It sits underneath the relay box which has 3 large connectors.
We now need to find the Brown wire which has a thin red strip on it that goes into the ECU. Thankfully the supplied instructions are spot on. The Brown/Red wire is located on the Grey ECU connector. It is on the top row, 2nd wire from right to left.
This is the wire we need to cut.
The instructions supplied say that you can disconnect this plug from the ECU to facilitate more working space but I found this to be too much of a chore as I would have had to drop the undertail to get the ECU out of its locating mounts. I simply got a pair of side cutters and cut the Brown/Red wire halfway between the ECU plug and where it became visible from underneath the black tape protecting the ECU wiring harness.
Go and get your wiring harness supplied with the XTRE and locate the Black/Green wire on it. This should also have a sticker on this wire saying "to ECM". This wire needs to spliced with the ECU connector side of the Brown/Red wire we previously cut. To do so grab one of the yellow butt connectors supplied which look like this:
and place both wires into the connector as far as they will go. Press down on the yellow cap with your thumb to splice the wires. Next press down on the connector again with a set of pliers to fully seal the connector.
Repeat this process with the Black/White wire on the XTRE harness and the other half of the Brown/Red wire on the ECU harness.
It should now look something like this:
I also put some zip ties around the wires just outside of the yellow butt connectors to make sure they cannot be pulled out. Just in case as the instructions tell you to.
Route the XTRE wiring harness around the left side of the exhaust servo and battery and plug in the 4 pole connector into the XTRE.
With only 1 more wire to tap we are almost done.
The last wire is the red power wire which is all by its lonesome on the XTRE wiring harness. You can wire it directly to the battery which will constantly drain power (a bad thing) or you can tap it into a switched 12V wire as per the instructions.
I decided on the later.
Underneath where the petrol tank sits, look for a 2-pole plug hiding in a black dust boot. It should be the only plug there that has a blue and a brown wire coming out of it. Use the supplied red wire tap as per the instructions to splice the brown wire to the red power wire on the XTRE harness.
(This connection is visible in the below picture. Look for the single red wire (XTRE harness) and the small red box that is attached to it (red wire tap).
All that is left to do now is tidy up the power wire on the XTRE wiring harness with zip ties and attach the XTRE unit to the inside of the frame with the supplied velcro. I was not too impressed with the velcro supplied so used some spare Velcro brand industrial sticky backed velcro I had left over from when I installed my HID's.
Before you start to put your bike back together, turn the ignition on and see if the in-dash gear display works. If it does then job well done. Put your bike back together and go for a ride.
My XTRE unit was set to the 6th gear setting default which is what they call the "hard setting" I do not know if this is default accross all units but you may need to select which map you want to use as per the programing instructions supplied.
I hope this post helps someone who was in the same predicament as me a few days ago with no info of this install to be found on the interwebs
