Ninja 400 Riders Forum banner

How to reattach ABS wires into connector

233 Views 6 Replies 4 Participants Last post by  Rich T
Hi all, a few months back my ABS light came on and I noticed the front wheel ABS sensor cables had detached from the connector as shown:

Tire Automotive lighting Wheel Grille Hood


The connector as you can see in the picture has a clip mechanism which you press in to detach it from the plug that it connects to, and I thought perhaps that also holds the wires in place, although it does not. Any advice would be much appreciated.
See less See more
1 - 7 of 7 Posts
The pins that the wires were attached too are still in the socket probably. You will need to remove them. They are held in by a small tab that lock the pins in place. A pick can be used to relieve the tabs holding the pins in so you can get them out. You will then need to acquire the same type of pins that were detached from the wires. Once you have them you will need to prep the wires where the pins broke away from so you can cleanly install the new pins. The pins are crimped on. Then insert them back into the socket and you should be good to reattach it to the bike.

This is a simple task but can seem a bit daunting. Its really not. Make sure that the wires that remain from the broken pins are long enough to be repinned and routed to the ABS senor. You dont want the wires to be tought.

If you dont have any experience working with wires like this maybe a friend of yours can help you or maybe you are near a member on here who can. For a piece of mind, a dealership service department can take care of this for you.
See less See more
  • Like
Reactions: 1
Check out these threads:

(1) Front Abs connector broken | Ninja 400 Riders Forum
(1) ABS Main Harness (Front) broke - advice? | Page 2 | Ninja 400 Riders Forum

I was able to protect mine before it broke, but you can see other folks doing repairs after the fact (in the first thread the guy actually salvaged the existing connector pins).
  • Helpful
Reactions: 1
If you are asking how do the wires break? Just by turning the handlebars back and forth enough times -- the wires have no stress release, so they bend right at the connector crimp, and eventually the metal fatigues and breaks.
Wow, you would think they would allow more slack for the movement. Is that common on older models?
I think the issue wasn't a lack of slack for movement, but where the movement actually occurred... The wires have a thick plastic sheath all the way up to the connector, so that portion of the wire tends not to bend in favor of the fragile place where the bare wires enter the connector doing more of the bending -- so a disproportionate amount of the bending occurs where the wires are most fragile... On my bike, I just covered that portion of the wire with heat shrink tubing, so it could not bend, and now the thick plastic sheath (which is unchanged in length from stock) bends instead, distributing the bend over a longer length of wire -- so hopefully I won't have a failure.
  • Like
Reactions: 3
1 - 7 of 7 Posts
Top