Hot lights
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Tourer
Joined: Nov 2005
Posts: 300
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Hot lights
Bike, 96 Ultra....
Knowing a little bit about electricity, but far from an expert, I've come across something interesting that has me scratching my head.
Last Friday night I'm riding and I decide to use my passing lamps with the head light and after a while they go brown and then go out completely while I'm driving. Me, I'm like great, now what am I going to do now... I turn all the lights off and a couple mins later the head lamp comes back on...
OK, I'm going to jump forward a couple days later, I have the fairing apart and I'm looking for a broken speaker wire in the harness (found it) and also found a ground wire from thespeedo gauge lightthat somehow got caught in the speedo cable nut.
While fixing all this, I decide to turn on all the lights and noticed the circuit breaker to the head lampswas getting warm and so was the power wire going to the fuse block. The wire is not discolored or melted anywhere, but almost to hot to touch.
It seems that the driving lamps are over loading the circuit.
Now this is where I asking for your opinions....
The bike is 12 yrs old and spent its life in Miami area, maybe the wiring might have a little bit of corrosion from old age and environment thus causing resistance... not enough to effect the operation of thehead light, butenough so that it cannot handle the load of 3 lamps.
Or, the passing lamps are not factory and have a higher electrical draw thus over loading the circuit.
In any case, I'm thinking about just creating a circuit with its own fusible power source just for the passing lamps and just not worry about it.
What do you think ?
All the wiring in the fairing is clean and in good shape. I did however reroute a few sections, zip tied others... You just can't be too careful.
Knowing a little bit about electricity, but far from an expert, I've come across something interesting that has me scratching my head.
Last Friday night I'm riding and I decide to use my passing lamps with the head light and after a while they go brown and then go out completely while I'm driving. Me, I'm like great, now what am I going to do now... I turn all the lights off and a couple mins later the head lamp comes back on...
OK, I'm going to jump forward a couple days later, I have the fairing apart and I'm looking for a broken speaker wire in the harness (found it) and also found a ground wire from thespeedo gauge lightthat somehow got caught in the speedo cable nut.
While fixing all this, I decide to turn on all the lights and noticed the circuit breaker to the head lampswas getting warm and so was the power wire going to the fuse block. The wire is not discolored or melted anywhere, but almost to hot to touch.
It seems that the driving lamps are over loading the circuit.
Now this is where I asking for your opinions....
The bike is 12 yrs old and spent its life in Miami area, maybe the wiring might have a little bit of corrosion from old age and environment thus causing resistance... not enough to effect the operation of thehead light, butenough so that it cannot handle the load of 3 lamps.
Or, the passing lamps are not factory and have a higher electrical draw thus over loading the circuit.
In any case, I'm thinking about just creating a circuit with its own fusible power source just for the passing lamps and just not worry about it.
What do you think ?
All the wiring in the fairing is clean and in good shape. I did however reroute a few sections, zip tied others... You just can't be too careful.
Tourer
Joined: Oct 2007
Posts: 331
Likes: 1
From:
RE: Hot lights
I think your dead nutz on.
For any other bike, with aux passing lamps, they come with a Relay to wire them up. The touring bikes, for some reason, don't. They are all wired directly with the headlight, on a single 15amp fuse.
It makes NO sense to me, but I digress.
I think the best way to do this is to use a relay. If you're familiar with relays, it'll be a simple task. If not, just let me know, and I can throw together a diagram for you.
RJ
I would be concerned that you're
For any other bike, with aux passing lamps, they come with a Relay to wire them up. The touring bikes, for some reason, don't. They are all wired directly with the headlight, on a single 15amp fuse.
It makes NO sense to me, but I digress.
I think the best way to do this is to use a relay. If you're familiar with relays, it'll be a simple task. If not, just let me know, and I can throw together a diagram for you.
RJ
I would be concerned that you're
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