Back in March 2018
I found myself dealing with some poor quality wiring which left me nearly stranded in the rain. I affected a particularly dodgy repair which lasted until the 6th of January 2020 when, with a mere 21118 miles on the clock, the bike stopped dead at the top of the driveway one morning. I didn't know what caused it but was thankful I wasn't in the middle of nowhere when it happened, at least the bike isn't vindictive..
Once home (in the dark of course, it being January) I found that the bike would sometimes turn on, but more often would not want to know. Turning the bars had mixed results. A quick look into the connector of doom revealed fat yellow sparks, aha! Sure enough..
The connector that was on the end of the wire was long since lost to the corrosion gods.
There was nowhere near enough spare length on the wire to cut it back again and in any case the connector is a weak point so I decided to liberate some wire from work and splice it in myself, make a permanent connection instead - one that can't rot off! Cutting the white wire back revealed green at least 2cm upwards inside the insulation, the wiring used on the 250SL is of incredibly poor quality. Not that it should come as any surprise by now!
I lopped the wire off from the other side of the connector and attempted a linesman's joint, this gave the copper strands a great chance to stab my thumb in many places. Ouch.
Running the soldering iron along the heatshrink made it shrink a bit, I don't think this was particularly successful in sealing the joints from water but it will at least stop the bare wires contacting the frame.
And that was that, no further issues found. Not the most impressive bit of engineering but I feel like I should document these things as chief 250SL abuser!
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