Scorpio i900 install

[notjohndavid]

Good morning all. I spent a few hours yesterday installing a Scorpio i900. I hadn't seen anyone do any sort of install or write-up here on the forum so I thought I'd try and document the process as best I could for anyone thinking about installing an alarm or thinking about purchasing the i900. This is on my faster-blue 2007 FZ6. I assume other years are similar. I was really pressed for time since I was using a garage on the Marine Corps base that closed at a certain time. If I didn't finish the install I wouldn't be getting home! So things were certainly more rushed than I wanted them to be and I didn't get everything secured down, but I did the majority of the work. Below is what I got accomplished yesterday. I'll post a follow up with some pics of where things were placed to secure them and a review of the system after I've had a chance to use it a bit. [click links for larger photos]



Here's a photo of the "brains" of the Scorpio i900 system. Scorpio calls this the MCM-9 unit. Obviously it's not very large. Everything aside from the RFID antenna an antenna to pick up the transmitter (which amounts to a wire, it's about 18 inches long and it's actually already attached to the MCM-9). The optional accessories and harnesses are plugged into this unit. Even the alarm siren is in this unit.

As I already said I was rushed with the install so the quality of my photos isn't so great. Hopefully it'll give you a general idea of what you need to know though. I'll try to put the rest of this post in a logical order, so bare with me.

I opted for the "factory harness" kit which amounts to a bag of connectors that help you integrate the unit into your fz6. The kit that we use is the "YAM-6" which has the following two harnesses in it:



We only use the one for the R6. You can pretty much toss the one for the R1.

We’ll start by installing this harness. If you don’t opt for the factory install kit there is a “generic” harness that’s included with the i900. The factory install kit is like $30 and in hindsight I’m not sure I would have paid for it. It saved me about 10 minutes *shrug*. It all depends on how you want to make your connections.



Here’s a horrible picture of the generic harness. It plugs into the MCM-9 and on the other end has some crimp-on spade connectors. The idea here is that you use a press on T connection to the wire you want to connect to. I didn’t think of taking a picture last night since I wasn’t using these but I’ll try to think to add a picture of these connectors later so you can decide which route you want to take. Anyway, you press these connectors onto the wire and they cut the insulation around the wire and make the connection that way. They work but I’m not a fan of them. They take up a lot more room than my method of solder and shrink wrap, plus they don’t look factory. I think it’s important for this install too look factory aka “stealth”. Also I am paranoid about problems associated with dampness and moisture. A good solder joint is going to stand up to moisture whereas the press-on fittings may not. So I didn’t want to use them. Regardless, the connections we are aiming for either way are:

Left turn signal
Right turn signal
License plate lamp (or any other switched +12V source)
Ground

The “factory harness kit” made it simple to connect to the tail light and ground. Simple disconnect the factory connections and install the Scorpio connections in-line with them. The kit does not help you install the left and right turn signal leads. This is why I say it may not be worth the $30. It saved me making two connections. The factory harness kit uses the spade plugs for the left and right turn signals. Whereas the Generic harness kit uses the spade plugs for left, right, +12v switched source and ground. I say it saved me the 10 minutes since I wasn’t going to use the spade connectors. I figure 5 minutes per wire to cut, strip, place the shrink wrap around it, solder, shrink and wrap with electrical tape.

 

[notjohndavid]

Okay on to the nitty-gritty. The easiest place I found to get to the wires in question is on the left side tail section. Just remove the side fairing and you’re looking at what you need.



This is pretty easy to take off. Just remove the seat. Then you’ll gain access to one hex head bolt. I’ve already removed it in the photo but, after you remove that bolt, then the only thing holding on the trim piece is one pressure fitting in the front and rear. Just pull outward on the front and rear of the piece and it’ll come off. Easy-breezy.

There’s a couple wires here but study it a bit and you can make sense of it.



Here are the left and right turn signal connectors. The black harness houses the Left turn signal and the white/grey one is for the right. It really doesn’t matter for our purposes which is which. We’re just looking for the dark green wire and the brown wire. Dark green on the black harness and brown on the grey harness. The other wire in each harness is ground for what that’s worth.

I believe you can see in the photo. I have cut back a bit of the factory wire loom. It’s actually a sticky sort of wire wrapping. This exposed some more wrapping which is electrical tape. It should be noted that these connections are actually optional. If you don’t want your turn signals the flash when you arm/disarm the system, or when the alarm is going off… you don’t have to connect them. I cut back the factory wrapping pretty much every time I was making a connection. It just gave me more room to work and allowed me to do a better job.




Here’s the wire’s for ground and the switched 12+ source (license plate lamp). These ARE NOT optional. This is the only place that the “factory harness kit” helps out. Just unplug these two connections and plug in the factory harness kit. I’ve actually already installed the harness in the photo. If you were looking at the harness in hand it’d make more sense. Sorry I didn’t get a better picture of the harness before I started installing it. You should be able to see the two spade connectors to the right of the photo. These are the connectors that are on the “factory harness kit” that go to your left and right turn signals. The “generic harness kit” is simple 4 of these type connectors.

Like I said I wasn’t using the spade connectors for the left and right turn signals. All I did was cut them off, strip about ½” of insulation off the end of them….then cut the brown and green wires on the factory harness, strip ½” of insulation off each end of the wires I had cut, thread the Scorpio wire along with one end of the factory wire through some shrink wrap, them twist them all together like so:



I recommend only doing one side at a time so you don’t accidentally connect your left turn signal to your right and vice-versa. I’m colorblind so maybe this is more of a concern to me than you guys. Remember to put the shrink wrap on BEFORE you solder 

Get your soldering iron hot. Touch a little bit of solder to the tip to “tin” it. The tinning helps conduct heat into the wires you are about to solder. Touch the hot tip to the wires, and then touch the solder to the wires themselves. This isn’t a great solder joint but the soldering gun I had access too was way too big for the job. I made do with what I had at the time.



After you solder the wires and feel confident that it’s a good connection, wait several seconds and make sure the solder joint is cold…then slide your shrink wrap over the joint. If you try and do it immediately you’ll find that the shrink wrap actually shrinks as you are trying to slide it. Makes for a difficult time.

So slide the shrink wrap over the joint, and apply heat. The best way to do this is with a heat gun. A simple bic lighter will work too, though not ideal. I only had matches…you make do with what you have I guess, but the end result should look something like this:



Here’s a little better view of all 4 connections. You can see the two turn signal wires that I connected to the factory wires. Note that the light grey wires are the Scorpio wires to the left and right turn signals. The heavy orange wire and black wire goes to the Scorpio harness for the +12v switched source and ground respectively



They orange and black wires are connected to the Yamaha blue and black wires. That you can just barely make out.

 

[notjohndavid]

After I made all the connections and made sure everything was shrink wrapped and ready to go I wrapped everything with electrical tape to emulate the factory harness:



Like I said earlier, the idea is stealth. I think it’d be hard for a thief to look at that and in a matter of seconds tell that we’d done something there.

And in case it wasn’t really clear what area we were working on before here’s a wider shot… this is after everything had already been connected and wrapped back up:



Now we want to hook up the HAR-1 harness. This comes with the Scorpio unit. And here’s a picture after I made a modification to it:



My chosen location for the install (under the seat) made the connector for the battery too short, so I added a couple feet of length to it. Again, just solder and shrink wrap. I did add some electrical tape over the shrink wrap to hide the bright blue color. If I had been using black shrink wrap I wouldn’t have had to do that.

At the bottom-middle of the picture you’ll see two connectors. The left one goes to the MCM-9 and the white colored molex connector on the right plugs into the generic harness or factory harness kit.

So I just ran the +12v wire along the inside of the frame, making sure it wouldn’t get caught on anything or interfere with any moving parts. Then I zip-tied it down. Again, main idea was to make it look factory.

The battery is at the front of the bike under the fuel tank. The fuel tank is actually really really easy to deal with. Much easier than my old Suzuki gs-500. Just remove the two hex-head bolts at the front of the gas tank, and lift up. I just propped the front of the gas tank up while I did the work I needed to do. Leave the back attached to make things go quicker. Or remove the back if you want extra room to tidy things up and to give yourself more room to work with. I didn’t want to disconnect the fuel hose though, call me lazy. I was able to get away without having to remove the trim pieces on the fairings. Unscrew the positive battery lead, slide the bolt through the ring connector on the Scorpio harness and reattach as so:



Blurry city :-| sorry guys.

Want to talk about bad photos? How about this one:



That’s the optional ignition disable/anti-hijack relay. Though you can’t tell behind the packaging. Anyway the idea of this unit is that when the bike is armed there isn’t anyway to start the bike unless they find where you connected this unit in, and remove it. I highly highly, highly recommend this option. It’s not going to prevent someone from picking your bike up and loading it in a truck but it’ll prevent someone from trying to hotwire it… and if they did load it up in a truck it’ll give them more work to try and get the bike to run.

There are a number of places you can tap in to install this unit. The Scorpio manual says the positive fuel pump lead, positive fuel injection system lead, positive ignition coil wire or ground wire on the ignition module. Or the engine cut-off switch wires.

Out of those options when factoring in the size of wires on the ignition disable relay option with the ease of getting to each of those things… it was just easiest for me to go for the fuel pump wires. I mean, I already had the gas tank loose, right?

 

[notjohndavid]

So look under the gas tank and you’ll see a white plastic area where the fuel pump is. The fuel pump is the brown harness; it also has the fuel line next to it.



The red wire with the blue stripe is the positive lead that we need.

Cut the wire. Now attach each cut wire to the two black wires on the relay. There’s a picture of this in the manual, if it’s unclear ask and I’ll draw up my own picture for you.

Remember, shrink wrap goes on before you solder.




Then shrink wrap it.



That’s a slightly better picture of how to wire in the relay. See how the red/blue wire has been cut and there is a black wire going to each cut end?



Wrap it back up with electrical tape to make it look factory. Make sure you don’t get too crazy with the cheez-wiz and wrap too far near the end, otherwise you’re not going to be able to plug these harnesses back in.

Now that we’ve got the optional ignition disable relay taken care of… we’ve got the optional perimeter sensor. It’s a device that uses microwaves to sense things around it. It can’t go through metal so pretty much the only place to put it is under the tail section somewhere or under the seat. I went with under the seat. Here’s a picture of the sensor:



These two optional sensors plug into a harness that plugs into the MCM-9 brain. If you opt not to install/purchase these sensors the alarm unit comes with an end cap to plug in the place where this harness would go.



The other thing we have is the RFID antenna.



Thanks to my poor picture taking you can’t tell much about that. But it’s about the size of a finger. This needs to go somewhere under the seat or tail section as well. I opted for under the seat.

I ran out of time before the garage closed so I didn’t get to affix any of the sensors or the MCM-9. I need to sort the details out as far as this goes and I’ll post pictures later about that. Here’s everything hooked up and thrown in under the seat:



Really you should plan everything out as far as where to place things before you start installing. In most cases I would have done this but since I’m about to go away for an extended trip I was more concerned about getting the alarm installed before I left. Then I’ll sort out the permeate mount locations later. This really isn’t a good idea because I could run into a problem as far as mount locations and then have to rerun wires later. I was willing to do this though as, otherwise I may not have a bike to have to worry about.

And if you are curious here’s a picture of the remote:



And a picture of the remote’s backlight… as best as I could get



This is the remote in setup mode where you can change which sensors you have active and how things operate. There’s a “Per off” indication on the right side that’s blinking… wasn’t able to time things right to get it clear in the photo but hopefully you get the idea.

I didn’t really set anything up as far as the system goes since I ran out of time in the garage but I’ll try and get that done this afternoon.

I’ll also try and post a review in the next few days as well.

 

[Wildcard]

Nice write-up! I will be posting up one with the alarm kit I got in today. Hopefully I will be able to hook it all up today and have a good review. Looking forward to your review.

 

[notjohndavid]

Nice write-up! I will be posting up one with the alarm kit I got in today. Hopefully I will be able to hook it all up today and have a good review. Looking forward to your review.

Thanks. I did what I could with the time constraint. A lot of the blurry pics were just because I was rushed. I'd certainly have liked to have done better but hopefully it'll give some people an idea of what's involved in installing an alarm.

It's really straight forward and not difficult. It just takes patience. The unit was pricey at about $400. I'm looking forward to using it and getting some impressions of the use to see if it was worth the $400. Stay tuned.

 

[Manijoe]

Thanks for the writeup very helpful. I installed mine today and also had to add wire. I also have to plan out how to organize all the sensors. Where did you put the antenna, under the seat as well? My other problem is after I was done BEHOLD!!!! no charger so my remote is dead and as soon as I plug everything in the alarm goes off.... guess I wont be riding for a while.

:spank: <- Scorpio Inc.

 

[Ryan T]

Good write up. I installed my i600 but I didn't use the yam wire harness and it was still quite easy. You'll love it. The perimeter sensor is what I like the most. The alarm chirps even before the would be crook can get close to the bike to mess with any of the wires.

Let me know where you place the antenna. It states in the directions that the last six inches should be vertical. I ended up taping it to my air box, seems to be working ok. It's funny cause in the instructions it says to keep it as far away from metal as possible, yeah, that's easy to do.

It's a kick ass system.

 

[Stumbles06]

Let me know where you place the antenna. It states in the directions that the last six inches should be vertical. I ended up taping it to my air box, seems to be working ok. It's funny cause in the instructions it says to keep it as far away from metal as possible, yeah, that's easy to do.

It's a kick ass system.

Is the wiring long enough to fit the antenna in the front fairing, taping it to the airbox is a pretty good idea (I'll have to tell Wolfman... he's got his under the seat), but what about heat from the motor???

Hard to find anywhere on the Naked's though, nowhere to hide anything on them.

 

[Wolfman]

Well i just finished installing my Scorpio 900 alarm too on my naked FZ6n. I put the main alarm unit in the storage compartment under my seat, along with my Speedohealer, and power commander, also mounted the perimeter sensor, RFID antenna, and perimeter sensor antenna as well (velcroed all in place)

Did not think to put perimeter sensor antenna under tank, as the installation manual sensor says to keep it away from metal.

All day today, the perimeter sensor has been going off, and it is getting rather annoying, as nothing seems to be going near the bike. The Perimeter sensor is set at the factory setting at this point, so i may need to get in there and reduce the sensitivity, before my neighbours kill me!

Other than that, the installation was easy, but i do agree, the bike specific wiring harness is not needed, i could of used the Generic connection kit, and got exactly the same result.

I also had to extend one wire, the wire to the battery.

Is a great piece of kit, and once you work out the programming of the remote, operation could not be simpler.

:thumbup:

 

[FZ1inNH]

Well done! This is a very worthy How-To! Thanks for taking the time to document the process, take photos and write it all up! :thumbup:

 

[Wolfman]

Well done! This is a very worthy How-To! Thanks for taking the time to document the process, take photos and write it all up! :thumbup:

+1 on that, very comprehensive write up. What strikes me though is how different people can take different path's on installing the exact same product on the same bike.

I did mine quite a bit differently, but like the way you have done your install, as it uses the side pods, rather than under the seat storage area, like i did...in retrospect, i should of done it that way, then i might not of lost as much space under the already crowded under seat storage area.

:thumbup:

 

[notjohndavid]

Thanks for the writeup very helpful. I installed mine today and also had to add wire. I also have to plan out how to organize all the sensors. Where did you put the antenna, under the seat as well? My other problem is after I was done BEHOLD!!!! no charger so my remote is dead and as soon as I plug everything in the alarm goes off.... guess I wont be riding for a while.

:spank: <- Scorpio Inc.

The one time I talked to Scorpio on the phone they seemed really nice. I can't imagine them not sending you out a charger to rectify the situation. Problem is having to wait for it :-/

+1 on that, very comprehensive write up. What strikes me though is how different people can take different path's on installing the exact same product on the same bike.

I did mine quite a bit differently, but like the way you have done your install, as it uses the side pods, rather than under the seat storage area, like i did...in retrospect, i should of done it that way, then i might not of lost as much space under the already crowded under seat storage area.

:thumbup:

Well, yesterday I started velcroing some things down. pretty much all of my underseat area is gone now lol. It's still sort of temporary. great thing about sticky stuff like velcro is if you don't like it where it is. put it somewhere else. the actual size of the sensors/relays/MCM isn't so big. it's all the extra wiring that they have from the factory attached to said units.

I still don't have enough time with the system for a review but did take a couple more pics that i'll try to put up either tonight or tomorrow. I'd be interested to see how other people approached things. As far as placement of things there are certainly different areas to put things and it'd be nice to see where people decided to do it. Give others that are interested in an install to choose and maybe for people that have already done the install to move things around.

regarding the perimeter sensor yeah it won't work under the tank. microwaves get reflected by metal. (that's why you don't put metal things in your microwave!)

 

[notjohndavid]

Not much light when I get off work so I'll have to wait until I switch shifts because I can get some pics of where I mounted all the modules such as the MCM, sensors etc but here are some pics that may help explain a bit why I decided to soldier everything.

Here's a pic of the "generic" harness and the T connector that are included with the Scorpio alarms. the "generic" harness only has 2 wires that have different connector types than the yamaha specific ones. This is why I don't think I'd pay for the yamaha specific one if I had it to do over again. The generic has 4 female spade connectors whereas the yamaha specific one uses 2 spade and 2 banana plugs. that's just like... my opinion though man.



So the way this works is that you find the spot on the wire you want to tap into. You place the purple t-tap on the spot and apply a lot of pressure.



Then after you get it all clamped down you just plug the appropriate wire from the harness into it like so:



They work okay. I'm just not a fan of them because a solder joint and shrink wrap is superior. for demonstration purposes I just applied that t-tap to a piece of scrap wire and then opened it back up to show you how it works. When you press it closed the tap actually cuts the insulation around the wire and makes contact with the wire. There's really nothing to weatherproof it and being in a moist enviroment the wire can corrode and degrade the connection. I've had issues with them in the past and had to redo them with solder so I just skip them all together now and go straight for the solder. If you're afraid of solder or lazy you can get by with them. so here's a close up of the opened connector



hopefully that clears that up.

 

[Ryan T]

I didn't have any problems with the lengths of the wires for any of the items. I placed the perimeter sensor in the storage section under the seat, the main unit under the tank, and I ran/taped the antenna to the air box. I'll take and post pictures when I get a chance.

I'm not having any issues with false perimeter alarms at all and I turned the sensitivity up from from the factory setting. It's pretty sensitive but only when there is movement within the sensors range.

If someone has a better place for the antenna then I'm all ears. I'd be interested to know where everyone put their alarm wire since it states that the last 6 inchs should be vertical.

Thanks.

 

[notjohndavid]

I didn't have any problems with the lengths of the wires for any of the items. I placed the perimeter sensor in the storage section under the seat, the main unit under the tank, and I ran/taped the antenna to the air box. I'll take and post pictures when I get a chance.

I'm not having any issues with false perimeter alarms at all and I turned the sensitivity up from from the factory setting. It's pretty sensitive but only when there is movement within the sensors range.

If someone has a better place for the antenna then I'm all ears. I'd be interested to know where everyone put their alarm wire since it states that the last 6 inchs should be vertical.

Thanks.

I currently have pretty much everything mounted in the storage compartment under the seat. I'm liking this less and less and will probably move the MCM to under the tank.

The instructions say to mount the antenna with the last 6" of it being vertical to try and produce gain from the antenna in the horizontal direction by polarizing it in that direction. (Waves are radiated in the horizontal direction instead of at the ground and and at birds). What ends up happening when you do that is the antenna becomes the 6" part that's vertical and the other 12" becomes the feedline. The higher you mount it the better as well.

Oh a point here. You can lengthen/shorten all the wires EXCEPT the antenna. Don't try and length or shorten it!

 

[Ryan T]

Here are the locations for the i600. I lost the picture of the antenna taped to the airbox.

The first picture shows the perimeter sensor under the seat in the storage area.

The second and third are shots of the main unit under the tank.

Th absent picture would be the antenna taped on side of airbox.

 

[notjohndavid]

Here are the locations for the i600. I lost the picture of the antenna taped to the airbox.

The first picture shows the perimeter sensor under the seat in the storage area.

The second and third are shots of the main unit under the tank.

Th absent picture would be the antenna taped on side of airbox.

Thanks for the pics! Very interesting how we've all chosen different places.

I think I'm going to move my control module to where yours is. My corncern before was to protect it from someone ripping it out easily but I don't think that's a concern so much where you placed yours. My perimeter sensor is pretty much exactly where yours is.

 

[reiobard]

very good information, i am looking at doing something like this very soon and this will be extremely helpful.

 

[Ryan T]

Thanks for the pics! Very interesting how we've all chosen different places.

I think I'm going to move my control module to where yours is. My corncern before was to protect it from someone ripping it out easily but I don't think that's a concern so much where you placed yours. My perimeter sensor is pretty much exactly where yours is.

What did you do with your antenna? Did you hook up the kill switch accessory? It's not real easy to get to for someone to rip out in this location. Not to mention, the perimeter sensor should activate prior to that.