dimmer switch honda dream 250 ca72

[rzgkane]

Yes,

Those things are really hard to get back together unless you have the entire switch and harness out of the bike.

Wilf

Well, the good news is that I found the damn ball bearing. Problem is the little spring that gives it tension has seen better days. Pretty unwound, almost like someone tried to stretch it to make it work better.

Thanks to Rick at Rick's Vintage in Carson who came through big time with the petcock kit and the ever elusive dimmer switch detent spring. Effed with it for an hour and finally got all the bits to go back in at the same time.

Fired the new bike up for the first time and it ran like a champ with one exception. Not getting much of a charge from the dynamo. What should the voltage be at the battery with the engine running at 2500 rpm? I'm barely getting anything over 12v. Not sure if that's ok in vintage bike land. It's not good in the automotive world where you want voltage to be somewhere between 13.8 and 14.2.

[ELMST616]

assuming the switch is similar to a cb, sounds like you're missing some pieces...there's a brass kind of u-shaped piece that makes the contacts. an insulator piece that fits up inside that, and a spring and a ball bearing that goes through the plastic piece to apply tension to the assembly...some fun to put together. attached pix are the best I have to help explain, once you've got all the pieces it's (sort of) obvious how they go together. Careful not to force anything, that terminal board is fragile; I had to epoxy mine back together as you can see in first pic. (Hint: click on pic to enlarge.)

Hope this helps. --Lee

This is a very helpful post. I wish the forum retained the images as those images would be even more helpful. Anybody have recent images?

[ELMST616]

Updating this thread with some recent images from my CA77 305.

The dimmer switch assembly is definitely tricky to put back together. The order of reassembly is to put the ball bearing in first, then the spring, then the insulator, then the u-shaped contact point. Once that is in use a thin file or something to compress the spring and insert the contact plate of the wiring.