Electrical troubleshooting - Motorcycle-Journal Forums

**87gsxrnut** · 09-18-2005, 01:44 AM

Note: I was told when I bought this bike a few years ago that the harness had been REPLACED. After I got a good look at it, turns out that it WAS NOT replaced at all. As a matter of fact, there was a lot of "hackwork" in there with connectors etc. The harness was routed incorrectly as well. That is also why this bike has been sitting for so long. I had to repair zip-tied and dangling headlight relays by installing the correct rubber mounts, and rewire, resolder and heatshrink many marginal crimp connectors before starting on troubleshooting the turn-signal issues. MORE added time to my day

Well, my 1100 has been torn down for about 2 1/2 months now. Cleaned the carbs, did a bunch of other work a while back. But, after all of that, the signals stopped working. Today I finally got off my *** and did some work.

Initially I thought that it might be a bad fuse. Always go with the easiest fix first. I swapped fuses with the headlight fuse (same amps - 10), No change. Headlights worked, so that meant that the fuse was good.

Next, I swapped flasher units. Pulled two out of my parts bins. Tried one, no dice. Tried a second, no dice. OK. I pulled out the rest of the harness. I grabbed my Fluke 179 Multimeter and got to work.

I sprayed contact cleaner into the switch to ensure that it was making a good connection. I then disconnected the turn-signal switch connector from the main loom. Looking at a color wiring diagram from my MANUAL (you ALL have manuals for your bikes, right?), I found the left, right and common leads for the switch. Setting my meter for connectivity, I moved the switch to the left, then to the right. I got the tell tale beep that said the switch was making a connection. Good news there. I additionally sprayed both male and female connector leads with contact cleaner, then vogorously moved them back and forth before final assembly. I wanted to make sure they were making GOOD contact when I was finished.

I then worked my way to the flasher unit. I removed the flasher unit. I set the Fluke for DC volts to see if there was current flow to the flasher unit. Turned the key and switch, and the meter read something like 9.75 volts. Good enough. Battery was reading 11.75. So, we had a good fuse, good switch, good voltage to the flasher - could ALL of my spare flashers have been bad?!?!?!? Well, I knew my flasher unit in my 750 was still good. I went ahead and yanked it and plugged it in . VIOLA! We had signals. I dug even DEEPER into my electrical bin and finally found a good flasher unit (my last one).

When I was reassembling the fuse box, I realized that the existing screw holding the cover on was stripping out when tightening. Turns out it was the incorrect one. RRRRR . . . dug back in to the bins. Found a correct cover and screw. BUT, that screw would strip as well. MAN! Dug out a real GOOD fuse box that wasn't stripped. Removed the old box, then installed the new box w/fuses AND I grabbed a couple of spare fuses to add to the spares clamp on the inside of the cover (always carry spare fuses with you). With the incorrect screw, that fuse box wasn't very well protected against the elements.

LESSONS LEARNED HERE:

1. Always do as thorough a once-over when buying a used bike as you can. I still would have bought this bike, but I would have known about the harness being funky, and would have corrected that years ago. I noticed that it wasn't quite right last year, but didn't realize exactly how bad it was until last July. I was so busy racing that this bike was on the back burner for a long time.

2. Always have your manual handy. Again, it helped me troubleshoot this bike real quick.

3. Check the easiest problem first. If I had actually went with a KNOWN flasher unit first (i.e. from my 750), I could have saved some time today. But, it turned out OK, because the switch needed some TLC, as did my connectors.

4. If you have an old bike BUY PARTS BIKES! I bought a few over the years, and parts off of stripped bikes from blokes I know. Man, it saved me from spending money AGAIN. I had the rubber mounts for the headlight relays, several flasher units (some were bad, but that is the norm with electrical parts), and the spare fuse box. Now I KNOW those sections my my 1100 loom are TIGHT and shouldn't fail unexpectedly.

5. Consistent troubleshooting from one end of the signal to the other will find the problem, and find it rather quickly.

I'll get this thing done soon. Thank god it is getting cooler now.

- Nut