Do friends let friends buy a 2005 Yamaha FJR?

[RaYzerman]

The ground spider issues are Gen2 ('06-'12) only, and are preventable if they are serviced early with contact paste. There are 8 spiders, 2 I believe are 5V low current, the others should be looked at. One was a main culprit, it is right there in the engine bay along with 2 more, one up by the headlight, one each side up front. Best remove side fairings to access those, not hard to do.
Ivan's Performance has developed an ECU flash for Gen2 now, and this will cure any fueling issues they had for about the same price and way better than aftermarket Power Commanders, etc.
He also has a flash for Gen3 for those that think they need it, but the throttle by wire is good as is IMHO.

 

[Al st1100]

The ground spider issues are Gen2 ('06-'12) only, and are preventable if they are serviced early with contact paste. There are 8 spiders, 2 I believe are 5V low current, the others should be looked at. One was a main culprit, it is right there in the engine bay along with 2 more, one up by the headlight, one each side up front. Best remove side fairings to access those, not hard to do.
Ivan's Performance has developed an ECU flash for Gen2 now, and this will cure any fueling issues they had for about the same price and way better than aftermarket Power Commanders, etc.
He also has a flash for Gen3 for those that think they need it, but the throttle by wire is good as is IMHO.

I was wondering when you would comment

 

[RaYzerman]

The spider is a 6-way connector with a metal piece with six fingers that go into the six terminals, then is capped with a black plastic cap. The wire gauge is small, but one of the six wires carries the ground to the next spider in series... obviously the last one, we call S4 took all the heat so to speak and more than likely would heat up, melt the plastic connector as oxidation and poor contact occurred over time. There was a recall on this to address only this S4, and it took a heavy gauge wire to battery ground and an auxiliary wire to the engine ground..... it did not address others, but was quite robust in itself... would solve the majority of the issue for sure.
If one had the mating connector you could take the 6 wires, perhaps consolidate them into a heavier 12 or 14 gauge wire, and take that to ground independently. Those with melted connectors could just cut off the connector, solder them together with a heavier gauge wire and take it to a good ground.
Not insurmountable at all, just a PITA. Others got on them early and put contact paste in there, but that wouldn't solve the potential overload at S4, but I don't know of any who had problems if they did get to all that early on. Suzuki uses a very similar (if not the same) spider, but their wires are more robust, and I doubt they had the load that S4 had. Wouldn't hurt to lube those up too.
On my VFR, I have a 12-way spider, some had issues with those, again small gauge wires that carried 90% of the grounding on that bike... mine OK after 21 years, but no one had added any accessories either, and it does have a chassis ground location in addition.

 

[st1300doug]

13 years w/a '06 ST1300. 94K+ miles. BUT....then swooped up a '08 FJR1300 AE. Ohhh that "Paddle-Electronic Shift' is the cat-daddy way to go!