No Headlight, running lights

[secukin]

I was riding at night after changing out my headlight and adjusting it, and I was swithching between high beam and low beam gauging the difference of the adjustment when light goes out. I have brake, turn, gauges, ignition, starter etc, just no high, low beam or running lights? Damn near tore the the bike apart... 1982 GL 1100 aspencade. Main fuse good, tore ignition switch down soilder it.. no juice at head lamp, but the brown and green access wires on the plug are live. no power at high, low switch. Fuse block shows power at + and - but test light will not light on individual fuses.. checked wires under seat... running out of ideas.. any ideas or help would be appreciated.
Thx. Dob

[virgilmobile]

I'm looking now at a schematic.

[virgilmobile]

Let's narrow this down to just one problem first...The headlight...
I'll describe the path..
Power from the battery (red wire) enters the ignition switch..In the on position,it exits the switch on a black wire..This black wire goes to the fuseblock...4 of the fuses are feed from it,including the "headlamp 10 amp fuse....Power leaves this fuse on a black/red wire and goes to the start button...It leaves there on a blue/white heading over to the hi/low switch...

The question is which wire does not have power on it.

[WingAdmin]

I would focus on what you were doing when it failed - switching the high and low beams back and forth. I would concentrate on the high beam switch - pull it apart and check that the contacts inside it haven't failed. It switches the full current of the headlight, so the contacts tend to arc when it is switched from high to low, and eventually those arced contacts wear out.

[secukin]

First of all Thank You... Joined this site to make my post, read several electrical issues here and was hoping that you would reply. I have some things to check now and will get back with you!

Thanks again.....

[secukin]

Wingman you are on point, upon closer inspection the switchable part of the switchs contact points are diminished to almost gone... must have wore it down when I was speed switching. any advice on rebuilding the switch? soilder be to thick.... maybe epoxy some copper on it?

Thank you again, you rock.

[glasshead]

I had the same problem. I built the contacts up with a little drop of solder. Then sanded it down until it gave me positive stops at high and low beam. I only switch to low beam at night and I don't ride much at night, but I did this last summer and have had no problem out of it. In fact, I had totally forgotten about it until I read this. My theory; you can't break what is already broken. The best you can do is fix it.

[secukin]

Headlight issue solved! How I missed the switch the first place I went, who knows. I soildered the switch, filed it smooth and back in business! Still no running lights on rear light bar, would appreciate your expertise on this issue.

Thanks a million for fixing my headlight issue....

Dob.

[secukin]

Glasshead thanks for the input, just got back in and read your post after I typed my reply, hopefully you did not have to burn a full day and then some to fix it..... I have this attraction to fixing broken stuff, or sickness....

[secukin]

Virgilmoble
Thank you, missed your credit on posting power schematic, confused you with wingman, you rock also... you led me back to the switch appropriatly... Thanks a million! any advice on running lights?

Thanks!

Dob.

[WingAdmin]

On my GL1100, no amount of soldering, filing and tweaking that switch seemed to make it 100% reliable - the power from the headlight would arc through and cause it to fail again a while later.

What I ended up doing was putting a 30 amp SPDT relay in place. The headlight fuse was connected to the common contact, the normally closed contact was connected to the low beam filament, and the normally open contact was connected to the high beam filament.

The high beam switch was connected to the coil, the other end of the coil was connected to ground.

How it worked: When the the headlight switch was set to low beam, the relay was turned off, so the normally closed contact fed power to the low beam filament.

When the headlight switch was set to high beam, the relay was energized, and the normally open contact fed power to the high beam filament.

In this way there was no more high amperage current going through the switch - instead of 5.5 amps of current, it switched only the current of the relay coil, about 0.2 amps.

As an additional bonus, the headlight was ALWAYS on - either on high or low beam, depending on the relay state. Unlike with the original switch setup, there is no way for the headlight to turn off. If the switch fails entirely, the relay keeps the low beam on. In the original factory setup, if the switch fails, you have no headlight at all.

[virgilmobile]

Running lights are a seperate circuit.Ill get back to the schematic ASAP.
Do you have power on the tail fuse?
Does the bike have "extra" lighting or a trailer plug?

[secukin]

ok Wingman, I see the benefit of the relay, I will have to study your proceedure to make sure I understand... Really like not running all that juice trough the switch.

Virgilmobil I have tail light and brake light, I do have a trailer connect and a light bar with 6 on the sides and 5 0n the back, seems to be some regulator underneath the back right luggage compartment with 3 wires

[secukin]

Wat is a 30 amp spdt, get one from auto part store?

[WingAdmin]

Here's the circuit I'm describing. The extra bonus is that the headlight is fed almost directly from the battery, bypassing the switch and a bunch of 35-year-old connectors and harnesses, which means more voltage gets to the bulb - which means it's brighter!

Relay circuit

The relay has numbered terminals like this:

You can get the relays from Amazon or from any automotive store: http://www.amazon.com/TEMCo-INDUSTRIAL- ... ingdocs-20

[virgilmobile]

Virgilmobil I have tail light and brake light, I do have a trailer connect and a light bar with 6 on the sides and 5 0n the back, seems to be some regulator underneath the back right luggage compartment with 3 wires

Ok...what lights (running lights) do not work? Instrument backlight?
I could guess about the magic box...it may be a combiner or converter for standard trailer lights...the bike has separate turn and brake lamps.

[secukin]

Great post, thank you..... A couple questions, what size fuse from battery to relay? and where should I splice into the light switch, after the fuse box or harness on handlebar?

[secukin]

Ok, maybe not running lights, I have instrument lighting. I do not have the orange lights on the left side rear (3) , and (3) red on right side rear, also (3) orange and (2) red on the rear portion of the wrap around light bar. The turn signals work and are inset to the saddle bags, and the Brake light is center an seperate and working.... Hope I cleared up my misuse of terms.

[Norb496]

I'm having the same kind of problem with my 81. The headlight quit working. I took the start switch apart and cleaned it. I have power on blue white wire on that switch. On the headlight switch on low beam the 2 wires on that switch have power and when I switch to hi beam it looses power on both. Now when I check the wire in the faring while it's in low beam it seems the top of the plug has power. When I go to high beam nothing has power up there. Even tho it has power on the top terminal with low beam the head light doesn't work. I have a power probe and tested the bulb and it works fine. So I'm thinking the faring has to come off and look around under the weight thing. I did replace the push pull cables I may of knocked something loose but I was careful.

[WingAdmin]

I'm having the same kind of problem with my 81. The headlight quit working. I took the start switch apart and cleaned it. I have power on blue white wire on that switch. On the headlight switch on low beam the 2 wires on that switch have power and when I switch to hi beam it looses power on both. Now when I check the wire in the faring while it's in low beam it seems the top of the plug has power. When I go to high beam nothing has power up there. Even tho it has power on the top terminal with low beam the head light doesn't work. I have a power probe and tested the bulb and it works fine. So I'm thinking the faring has to come off and look around under the weight thing. I did replace the push pull cables I may of knocked something loose but I was careful.

I had this problem on my 1100. The problem is that all that current runs through that little switch, and it arcs and wears out.

I rewired mine using a 30-amp SPDT relay. I wired the power going in to the common terminal on the relay, the NC contact went to the low beam, and the NO contact went to the high beam. I took the high beam output from the switch and wired that to the relay coil.

That way, the headlight is always on, high or low, no matter what. Even if the switch completely fails, the relay makes sure the headlight remains on.