Lights Acting Funny

[akpasta]

Thanks Davo,
Just to be certain, I would cut out all the middle men and run a ground wire directly from the headlight to the battery's negative terminal. At least then you know if you have a ground issue or not.

Thanks! Will try to the neg terminal right now. That would make a perfect ground no matter what, right?

[akpasta]

Grounding the headlight to the neg terminal made it MUCH brighter and also not flicker with rpms wildly. Seems to be a grounding issue. It makes perfect sense because all the lights up front ground to the headlight-can through the speedo, which was removed and taken apart for repair, and perhaps not put together tightly enough to form a solid ground-- in hindsight the headlight issues started after that.

But one weird thing that happened is when I attached a wire from the headlight to the neg terminal on the battery, the starter acted REALLY funny and was totally sluggish, and didn't want to go at all at first. After I kickstarted the bike and turned it off and back on, the starter was working okay. The whole thing freaked me out and I disconnected the wire. Why would that happen?

Also, is the tail light also grounded from way up front? because that blew as well.

thanks.

[rzgkane]

Zero resistance from the ground side of any load to the battery is ideal. Nothin bad can ever happen from providing extra grounds or from grounding the load directly to the negative side of the battery. At worst, you exposed a weakness somewhere else that still needs to be found and repaired.

Grounding the headlight to the neg terminal made it MUCH brighter and also not flicker with rpms wildly. Seems to be a grounding issue. It makes perfect sense because all the lights up front ground to the headlight-can through the speedo, which was removed and taken apart for repair, and perhaps not put together tightly enough to form a solid ground-- in hindsight the headlight issues started after that.

But one weird thing that happened is when I attached a wire from the headlight to the neg terminal on the battery, the starter acted REALLY funny and was totally sluggish, and didn't want to go at all at first. After I kickstarted the bike and turned it off and back on, the starter was working okay. The whole thing freaked me out and I disconnected the wire. Why would that happen?

Also, is the tail light also grounded from way up front? because that blew as well.

thanks.

[akpasta]

Alright, I wired up a new ground from the terminal on the headlight shell straight back along the wiring harness to the negative terminal and it's grounding much better. Not ideal since the wire I happened to have is pretty bad but it is a temporary fix until I have time to buy some terminals for each end and solder things up properly. I might steal some of the connectors from the old headlight and solder them in line to my wire running under the tank and seat. It's hard to find high quality connectors and good, flexible, copper wire in small quantities, hardware stores only seem to stock the most brittle stuff around!

[rzgkane]

Find a good electronics store in your area. They will have bulk wire sold by the foot in every color under the sun.

You could also stop by any car dealer and ask one of the techs to sell you an old loom they've got sitting around.

Or try Marvac.com. This is the outfit in my area.

Alright, I wired up a new ground from the terminal on the headlight shell straight back along the wiring harness to the negative terminal and it's grounding much better. Not ideal since the wire I happened to have is pretty bad but it is a temporary fix until I have time to buy some terminals for each end and solder things up properly. I might steal some of the connectors from the old headlight and solder them in line to my wire running under the tank and seat. It's hard to find high quality connectors and good, flexible, copper wire in small quantities, hardware stores only seem to stock the most brittle stuff around!