Hey yall, so I've been working on totally customizing my savage and it's been going pretty well, I however feel a bit stumped with the wiring. I recently removed the gas tank and with it the stock speedo. I purchased a aftermarket speedo with turn light indicator, neutral indicator, brights indicator, and an oil indicator. I know how to splice wires but I just don't know which wires to attach to which! My new speedo has ten different colored wires... the stock speedo only had seven... I'm so confused, and yes I am a beginner to this kind of stuff and I am no electrician. Is there a way to determine which wire goes where?
 I'd much appreciate any help I can get! Thanks!  

I have a bit of experience with wire splicing on the Savage, and it can be a bit intimidating!  I lost a little sleep for a few nights on this project - but in the end it turned out just fine.



Here is a link to the wiring diagrams in the Technical Section of this forum.
http://suzukisavage.com/cgi-bin/YaBB.pl?num=1294779818

The wiring harness in the Savage has some basic rules.  Red is positive current prior to the key switch.  Orange is the positive current after the key switch.  A white stripe on the wire indicates that it has passed through a switch.  Black wires are mostly ground wires - with the exception of the positive power wire to the front running lights located in the turn signal housings.

You will mostly be concerned with the wires located at the top left corner of the diagrams....those are the wires connected to the dash panel and indicator lights.

You may have a few extra wires on the new speedo....as they may have some lights that you won't be using.  Some bikes have an oil pressure warning light, a low fuel light, a temperature light.....and all you will be using is the neutral light, the high beam light, the turn signal lights.....and the bulbs illuminate the speedo at night.  

I don't know what year your bike is...but likely the colors are similar for the indicator lights regardless of year (except for early bikes with the side stand light).

The neutral light uses orange for power, and blue for the ground (which is activated by the neutral switch in the transmission).

All other lights have a black/white dashed wire for the ground.  The yellow wire is always used for the high beam headlight on the bike.  (A thick yellow wire would be the power supply to the headlight, the smaller yellow wire goes to the indicator light). The low beam headlight, the tail light, and the dash lights in the speedometer uses a white wire.  The right turn signal is a green wire.  The left turn signal is a bit weird as it uses a solid black wire for the power (that is really strange).

Dave