I am wanting to put on an accessory socket on both bikes, mainly for gps and phone charging. What is the best way to do it these days? Add wiring and a fuse straight from the battery? Or is it better to piggy back off something else?
I would suggest running a fused wire from the battery. That way it is always energized AND you can power anything from it and not worry about power draw. You can easily wire in a relay to have it turn on/off with the key if that is necessary. The stock wires are very tiny and could easily be overtaxed if you were to piggyback onto an existing wire/circuit. Cam.
Is there a simple way of only supplying power to the outlet when the ignition is on? To avoid draining battery when accessory is plugged in but bike not running. I guess the relay just closes the circuit when power is off?
Some of the four wires from the key become "hot" when the key is on. I chose the br/w. Run a small wire like a 20g to the 85 terminal on a 20 amp automotive relay. If you want to turn the accessory off while the key is on, put a switch in line in this wire. Bring a big wire, 14g, with a fuse in the line from the positive side of the battery to terminal 30. Same size big wire from terminal 87 to the accessory you want to run. Bring another big wire from the negative side of the battery to the accessory. Run a small wire from terminal 86 to ground. You can spice into to the big wire from the negative side of the battery for this. If running large loads like big lights or heaters you may need a bigger stator to have enough electrical power.
Highway dirtbikes make a plate that replaces the top bar clamps. It has a few configurations and some of them have pre-made accessory plug holes already drilled. They are not very expensive and it is a clean way to add the accessory outlets. Cam.
Nice it be, unfortunately i would not be able to resist the temptation of pushing all of the buttons. I think the stator output would be ok for a low w gps charger right? I also want to do this on my orange bike which has plenty of electrical capacity.
Stator power plenty for GPS charger. Bigger stator required for big lights like Trail Tech or aftermarket Halogen or HID. I went through the trouble of the relay as described above because was using the Garmin cigarette lighter charger and it was running my battery dead in a week if I did not disconnect the charger it. The charger from the cigarette connector that is. Not to the GPS.
