Kriss Industries Inc.
Tuscon, Arizona
www.kriss.com
(520) 629-8800
A complete photo gallery of the installation of this product on a 2006 Yamaha FJR can be found here:
http://www.pbase.com/fredharmon/kriss
Remembering to cancel your turn signals becomes pretty much a habit for many of us and we do it unconsciously without thinking about it most of the time, but that 1% of the time you forget can cause you real problems. I frequently find myself forgetting to cancel them because one of my bikes has a built in auto-cancel function that I have learned to rely on, while the other doesn’t. So I have gotten spoiled and now have bad habits that are hard to break. Whatever your reason, the Kriss turn signal cancel unit offers a good solution to the problem.
The unit comes with the main electronic box, with several wires and connectors and instruction pack. The cancel unit is inserted in series (in-line) with the turn signal flasher and interrupts power to the flasher after a certain number of turn signal pulses (programmable to 15 or 23) is reached. The cancel unit also monitors the brake circuit and resets the counter when the brake is applied, and doesn’t begin counting again until it is released. That is pretty much all there is to it. They've done a good job of keeping it simple which sometimes makes for more reliable operation. One lead goes to the input power that went to the flasher and another goes to the flasher to provide power to it, and a lead to the brake light circuit, ground, and flasher output and its done. It can be installed on a wide range of bikes, though this report will speak to the 2006 Yamaha FJR as that is what I installed and tested it on.
Installation
On the 2006 FJR, the first task was locating and accessing the turn signal flasher relay. It is located at the front of the bike just under the speedometer. In order to get to the wires and connections you will need to remove the panel covering the battery (panel A) and the one next to it (panel C) that covers the bottom of the instrument panel and right side of the dash. Once you have these panels off, you will be able to locate the turn signal, and brake relays as well as the negative terminal of the battery, which you will need to provide a ground to the Kriss cancel unit. The first thing you will want to do is decide where you want to actually install the box, as that will determine your wire length and routing. I chose to put it on the bottom of the right side fairing panel, attached with Velcro, just aft of the battery. This seems to be a good location as it is both shielded from the elements, and in close proximity to all the items it needs to get connected to.
Unit is velcroed to underside of this panel
Once located, I first connected the ground wire of the Kriss unit to the negative terminal of the battery. It is important to do this step first, because if you power on the Kriss unit without a ground connected, it will destroy the sensitive circuits inside. You need to be certain that you have a solid reliable ground and you must never disconnect the ground lead with power on the unit, or it will be ruined in just a few seconds. This is not uncommon with some of the sophisticated electronic components now available. Next, I disconnected the turn signal relay from its connector and identified the wire for power to it (blue with red stripe). I then cut the blue/red stripe wire so I could insert the Kriss cancel unit in series with it. The red lead from the Kriss unit gets connected to the harness side of the blue wire just cut, and the yellow lead goes to the side of the blue wire that attaches to the turn signal flasher. I soldered the connections and covered them with heat shrink so they could withstand the elements. Now the gray wire from the Kriss cancel unit gets piggy-backed onto the other wire from the flasher unit (brown with green stripe). There are a number of ways to piggy back this connector and the kit provides you an easy snap on wire tap. You also could strip off some insulation and solder tap the wire on and wrap it with electrical tape. I chose the harder route and removed the pin from the connector and solder tacked the wire right onto the metal connector pin. This produced a clean install, but I did run into some problems after I reinserted the connector pin into the wrong socket location, so if you go this route, make sure you pay attention to which pins go in which locations. In hindsight, it really would have been easier to just strip off some insulation and solder it on and be done with it. If you don't like to solder and strip insulation, just use one of the provided plastic piggy back snap on connectors.
Connecting the ground wire FIRST
Accessing the rear brake light circuit proved to be a bit of a challenge for me. I had hoped I could get to the bottom side of the brake light relay, but there was not enough slack in the harness to be able to lift out the relay to get to it.
Accessing rear brake circuit
I probably could have removed the relay and connected into the relay socket itself, or I could have run a longer wire to the rear of the bike to catch the brake signal there as well. I ended up removing the left front side fairing panel and tapping into the wire (yellow with green stripe) in the harness that feeds up to the brake light relay just before it branches off to the main harness near the right horn. I was trying to keep all the wires and connections up toward the front of the bike to avoid having to string long wire runs to the rear. I stripped off some insulation and soldered the green/red wire from the Kriss unit to the brake wire and then taped it with electrical tape. A snap on piggy back connector could have been used here as well.
Testing
The unit is programmable to cancel in either 23 or 15 flashes, and I programmed mine for 15. The counter is reset when the brakes are applied and doesn’t start counting again until they are released, so I figured 15 should be enough for me. Once the unit counts 15 flashes, it turns off power to the flasher, and stops the turn signals from flashing. However, it does NOT re-center the turn signal switch on the handlebars, so you still have to do this yourself before you can reapply the signals again. This is because the cancel unit needs to sense that the signals have been turned off before it can reapply them, so you must push in to cancel them before it can be restarted. So you still have to remember to push the cancel switch, only now you need to do it BEFORE you turn on the signals. The real benefit that the Kriss unit provides, is peace of mind that you are not going to ride 20 miles down the highway with your blinker on. It could indeed save you from an accident where someone thinks you are going to turn because your blinker is on, and that alone makes it worth it’s weight in gold.
I found the unit to be very reliable, and the fact that the counter resets whenever the brake is on, makes it work flawlessly without you having to think about it. It has never cancelled too soon on me (even set at 15 flash cycles) and has auto canceled ever time once I released the brake. In traffic and around town, I still like to push the cancel switch when I complete a turn so that the signals cancel immediately, but it is nice having the Kriss unit as back up for me in case I forget to do it. I am not sure it would be a good idea to totally rely on it to cancel for you all the time, because there are times when you make a lane change or a turn onto a busy street with lots of other adjoining intersections where you need the signals to cancel immediately, and the only way to do that is to manually cancel them.
I did find one problem with the unit on the FJR, and that is with the 4 way flashers. The Kriss unit has no way to distinguish between flasher operation, and turn signal operation, so it will cancel the flashers as well once they reach the flash count you have programmed. It would be a simple matter to install an override switch that would break the connection on the gray sense wire so the flashers wouldn't cancel in case you need to leave the flashers on, and I will probably do that to mine eventually.
Conclusion
It is a well known fact that there are motorcycle crashes every year caused when cars turn in front of riders who left a blinker on inadvertently. This product will greatly reduce the chances of that happening, and for that reason alone, it is a valuable addition to any motorcycle. The unit installed with little fuss and worked as advertised. Obviously it would be better if it had some sort of steering head sensor that allowed it to cancel instantaneously after making a turn, but it would not be feasible to make such a unit that would work across a variety of bikes. The ability to change the blink cancel count from 23 to 15 is a nice touch and should allow you to set it to your riding style. The rider will still have to manually push the cancel button before re-activating the signals, but this is just a matter of re-training your habit a bit. In the end the Kriss cancel unit just gives you one less thing to worry about when you ride.