Hey guys. To start out, I have an 08 Street Bob. I let my ex roommate (while he was still a roomate) respray my bike, as it was getting faded. He got it all back together (or so I thought) and since then, I'm having some weird electrical problems.

When I turn it on, everything looks fine. When I fire her up, the center cluster goes out, the left front turn signal goes out, and my blinkers don't work. After I ride it for a few minutes, I turn it off, restart, and the center cluster will work and sometimes even the blinkers, though sometimes not. I replaced the left turn signal bulb, but it stopped working a few minutes later.. Weird part is, when the blinkers are actually working, it works too, but won't stay on.

I took my bike to a friend in a club, and we tried to trouble shoot. We pulled the seat and checked the wiring, even pulled fuses and cleaned them off. After all of that, left the seat off with wires exposed, and everything worked.. Turned her off didn't touch anything, started it back up, and then ran into the same frustrating problem. He have no clue, and his only guess is the fuse terminal?

Sorry for the long story, I've just been searching all over and can't find these symptoms, and wanted to check here before having to pony up money at HD. Thanks guys.

 

Not an electrical expert but I would start at the battery and go from there. Double check all the connections, condition of the pos and neg battery cables, and get the battery checked out.

 

Battery is brand new, tried doing that too...maybe a pinched wire? I really don't want to take the damn thing to HD

 

I would remove the tank console and make sure the connector to the speedometer is snapped all the way on.

 

Somewhere I'm guessing you are getting shorted wired maybe got pinched somewhere. Would be an easy fix if that's it, also could be a nightmare finding the wire if it is too, or a connector somewhere got yanked on a little hard making a inconsistent connection. I hope it's not like computer related somehow

 

Sometimes just disconnecting a connector and then reconnecting cures a problem - my bike was throwing a speedo code after my engine build so I took my console back off and although everything looked good, I disconnected it all and reconnected and the code went away.

 

We removed the tank console too and everything looked good, though I am gonna try disconnect and reconnect. It's probably a good thing that my ex roommate still isn't around... Grrrr

 

First step: what has been messed with? Anything your buddy touched, check it out. Start at one end and continue till you find a problem

 

+1... look at the dash harness area for broken connectors/clips and also if that harness was "pulled", then it could have messed with your turn signal connectors inside the backbone towards the front of the bike. Multiple connectors in there.

 

There are some grounds underneath the tank in the frame. These grounds coming loose will cause similar symptoms, so I would have a look at that too. Remove your tank bolts, slide the tank back and pull out the plastic "cover" that is there. The grounds are on the inner left hand side inside the frame.