Ok guys, here is how to wire most garage door openers to work with most bikes using the high beam switch to activate the opener. Here is what you need:
-Garage door opener (obviously)
-Regular 12v relay (one that can be soldered to a circuit board)
LINK
-16g or so wire
-Pre-punched circuit board
LINK
-1K uf capacitor
LINK
-3 10K resistors
LINK
-Soldering iron and solder
-Wire cutters and strippers
-Heat shrink or electric tape
Ok, so the way this works is pretty simple. We build a momentary relay, so that when you turn your high beams on it activates your garage door opener for a second. This way, when you are riding around with your high beam on, your garage door opener is not constantly being pushed down and wasting battery. Im not going to go into specifics on how to actually solder and make circuits, but rather just show you how to set up this circuit. If you have any more questions, feel free to ask here or PM me. Oh yea, and I'm not responsible for any damage you do to your bike. If you don't feel comfortable soldering, you might want to skip this.
To start, make sure everything will be compatible with your bike and opener. With the opener, you have to take the case off and find the button on the circuit board that opens your door. We solder 2 wires to each side of the button contacts so that we can activate the opener by touching the two wires together. If you can get this far, you should be good to go.
Now, your bike has to have a switched 12v for the high beams in order for it to work correctly. It should work with all F4is, and any other bike with a switched 12v high beam wire. On the F4i, you will need to take off your headlight to solder in an extra wire to use. On the wiring harness on the bike (make sure you solder to the one on the bike, not on the headlights), right where the headlight connects with that big grey plug, you will need to find the WHITE wire, which is the switched 12v for the high beam (this will probably be different on other bikes, so check in your service manual to find out what color yours is). Now be careful here, because you have to cut this wire a few inches from the harness, and if you mess up you won't be able to turn on your high beams any more. Strip both ends of the cut part about 1/4 of an inch, and solder them back together with another wire soldered to the joint (don't forget heatshrink if youre gonna use it). So, you should have your wire back together where you cut it, with the addition of another wire soldered to the same joint. Make sure you use a wire that is long enough to reach wherever you want to mount your opener (I put it under the seat). Finish it with heatshrink or electrical tape and put your headlight back on.
Now we build the circuit. I got the following diagram from
http://www.the12volt.com/relays/page5.asp:
(If you dont know what a relay does or how it works, read about them
HERE)
Now, the only change that i made was that i used 3 10k resistors in parallel instead of just 1. This gave me about 1 second that the garage door opener would be on. Here is what mine looks like:
[IMG]http:
How-To: Garage Door Opener Using High Beam Switch
