| Author | Message | ||
     Crusty |
...A Royal pain in the ass. Last year, Terri's '08Ss developed a weird speedometer problem. The needle was spazzing out. bouncing from zero to whatever speed regardless of whatever speed the bike was going. Since the bike was under warranty, it went back to the dealer's shop. Several times. Terri would pick the bike up, and the speedo would do the Funky Chicken on the way home. Their final solution was to run a new wire outside the harness. That seems to have cured the problem. This past month, Terri's bike started blowing headlights for no apparent reason. My first suspicion was a bad voltage regulator; so I put a meter on the battery, but I was getting good numbers (less than 14.40 volts). So then I started looking for other things. Only the headlight bulbs were blowing. The tail light bulb was fine, the pilot bulb worked O.K., all the instrument bulbs were O.K., just the headlight. I tried swapping relays, in case one might be weak or malfunctioning, that didn't help. I found a spot where a wire was rubbing on a spark plug lead boot; and when I re-routed the wire, the problem went away. For two days. Then, I cut into the harness to see if I could see anything amiss, but everything looked fine, so I zip tied it all back together. We went out for a two hour ride, and the light was fine. Then the bike blew a bulb less than a half mile after we set out for work the next morning. This weekend, I borrowed a VOM meter from work that had a high and low "Hold" setting. I attached it to the headlight, and strapped it to the airbox cover, and away I rode. Within less than 50 yards, the voltage spiked at 19.46 Volts. Then it returned to 14.35. We called Manchester H-D and Dave King had a voltage regulator in stock. We ran up and got it, and I put it in, and took the bike out. The voltage never exceeded 14.4, so I think I found the problem. I hope so. | ||
| Glitch |
Let's hope so. I had some similar problems, and they stemmed from the wiring harness. That place where it transitions from the frame to the headlamp, there's a plastic shield that is supposed to protect wires. After removing that, and all the wrap I saw nothing wrong, later on I found a wire that had broken, while leaving the casing intact. | ||
| Natexlh1000 |
I popped a ground wire when I wired up my driving lights. Took a while to figure it out. The ground between the steering head and the frame is where the break was. I was about to cut into the harness to try to pinpoint where the break was but then I realized that I didn't care and so just ran a 12AWG jumper from the frame to the steering head. Doesn't matter where the break is! Let it be broke in there somewhere. |
