Wire colours

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The wire along the rear offside mudguard of my 1937 16H is bright red - which looks out of place (putting it politely). So I was about to replace it with unobtrusive black. Not exactly much effort - but now I see the wiring diagram shows it as colour number 1 = red.

So although it sounds obsessive to care about such trivia - it's also perverse to go the effort of replacing something only to deliberately make it wrong!

Does anyone know (or even care!) what it should look like? Maybe the little wire clips were originally set to make it less obvious? Black + white pictures obviously don't help much...

David Cooper

My 1939 WD model had only…

My 1939 WD model had only black wires (apart from those inside the dip switch sheathing). Colour codes were indicated by tiny coloured rubber rings close to the terminals.

If you have a brake light then you probably have a modification to the original wiring anyway and will need two cables unless you work with a resistor system.

Sorry - meant rear light.…

Sorry - meant rear light. No brake light. It's a civilian bike (with assorted tax discs from 1938 onwards). Brake light are another legal issue as well - are they required by law? Not sure that I'd feel safe without anyway.

What's a resistor system, please?

I suppose if the wire had been original fabric covered - like the wires under the instrument panel - then it would soon have gone black with road dirt anyway - and pvc wiring to the lamp is obviously not original anyway...

I believe that the civilia…

I believe that the civilian machines originally had a loom made of 'Armorflex' cable which is presumably the cloth-protected stuff and the WD had only rubber. The inner cable was however not colour coded.

Which rear light unit to you have ? The MT110 ? They didn't have a brake light and if you wish to retain the original single wire screw in connector then putting a resistor in line is one way round that. Effectively, the resistor is constantly in use, dimming the lamp except when by-passed by the brake switch. This can over-tax the charging system with a standard bulb but works well with an LED replacement.