Time to chase the electrical gremlin

a few weeks ago on my first ride of the season I was on my way home about 5 miles from home on the highway at dusk when my headlight when out. no biggie still enough light out so I flip my 4 ways on and just ride in the right lane. Get home, park the bike and not bother to think about it for awhile. About a week later a bought a new headlight thinking that was the problem. Went to put it in last week and pulled the old bulb out to see it was all burnt. Throw the new one in and nothing, not even high beams. check the fuse, nope good. even tried a new fuse and checked the other fuses, all good. pulled the headlight relay out, jumpered the connections on the bike end and can get the lights to come on. now that I think about it I don't know if I ever got the low and high beams on at the same time. So I ordered a new relay and got it today and that's not the problem.

Now I get the oh so fun project of checking wires to find the bad one. too bad its gonna have to wait till I get the track bodywork done cause that's first priority.

If you can jump them and the light comes on but the relay is not the problem then I would think the power that controls the coil is bad thus the relay switch does not get pulled down. Find the wire and trace back or better yet look in you service manual and see what is upstream and check it for power

Flipped the 4 ways on??

I have a signal minder, one of the features is when you cycle the right directional 6 times it activates both sides.

first thing I would check

why, that's been on there for over 2 years and came off of the previous 929. and its a separate relay from the headlight one. and the only thing in common with them is they eventually go to the same ground, but the entire bike does that.

Without a doubt it would be the first thing I checked...

Check the things that take physical wear and tear like the high/low switch?

Go to Home Depot and buy a multimeter. One of the best purchase I have made. I just found my sisters source of blowing fuses with it. Dome light terminals came loose in her car.

what the turn signal relay (signal minder)? it has nothing to do with it. the only thing they share is eventually downstream the grounds come together but like I said earlier the whole bike does that. and it didn't blow when I put the signal on. I was just riding along in the left lane and boom no lights.

this sounds like a good place to start. but wouldn't one of the lights still be on even if the switch was bad because the low beam is on regardless of what position the switch it in.

I'll check some stuff out tomorrow if I get the sanding done on the track stuff or if I get bored/annoyed with sanding.

You're probably low on blinker fluid.

I hope that's not it. my bike only takes synthetic blinker fluid and that stuff is hard to come by. maybe its the muffler bearings.

oh I'll check it. and no I didn't ask for help. I was just complaining about having to go through finding an electrical problem.

Why:
It is the artifact in a otherwise reliable system. You can likely remove it with zero impact and reinsert it later. In that it is like a speedohealer which I have seen cause bizarre issues (they are OK but in debug remove them). Guess was Powercommander... same thing.

My statement did assume it was plug in vs splice in thus removable.

now that you mention the Power Commander I'll unplug that although I doubt its the problem they have caused some funky issues that seemingly shouldn't have had anything to do with them. gonna go out in a little while and I'll disconnect all the extra dohickies (PC, SM, Speedohealer)

Hey I have seen some wierd funky stuff like.... No brake lights on a 60s ford mustang. Same lights will lite up as turnsignals. replace brake pedal switch and no joy. ended up being the turnsignal switch which was downstream of the brake pedal switch.

I bought this at Home Depot years ago and treated it like a stepchild.
http://www.shopping.com/xPO-IDEAL-Ideal-61-360-Test-Pro-Multimeter-360-Series

Still works and only had to replace the battery once. Was about $75 and saved me much more than that. Of course you could solder two leads (one with an aligator clamp to ground and one to a sharp metal poker)to a 12v bulb and start piercing wire till you find the dead spot?

only thing I checked today was the Signal Minder cause it was wicked easy especially since the windscreen is already off. not the problem.

I did get in a lot of sanding and fixing of the track bodywork. just gotta hit it up with some 220 tomorrow and I think it'll be good for some rattle can.

Dont know what yer talking about SSG? There is a link in my post.

Yeh Ideal wasnt bad. I was looking for a used Fluke but the price and availability of HD won out. They may have discontinued carrying it though.

ok I never did fix this problem. I took the aftermarket starter switch off over the winter and found a corroded wire connection. Figured that would be since the starter button interrupts the headlights. redid the wiring and nope still no headlight. So I decided to check the fuse and then got the idea to take the fuse out and check the box for power. I should have power running through the fuse block right? it registers 0.0 while other fuses have varying currents depending on which fuse it is.