I have a blown low beam element and when it blew, the bike died. If I switch to high beam it runs fine, but when I switch it to low beam it dies and just wont start. I have never seen this and I am sure it isnt designed to kill the power when the headlight is not working. Any ideas? I know the existing harness has been spliced in a couple places so I have a used replacement that I plan to test and install. A short somewhere, maybe?

I have also blown a couple instrument bulbs, which I thought was just a thing until this headlight problem popped up. Think they may be related?

Ugh... I thought I could avoid the electrical gremlins, but it seems you and I are sharing gremlins from the same family.... My headlight stopped working the last night (no blown fuse or headlight element) and now the battery can't hold a charge. I wish the bike would just run with no maintenance :cry:

Disconnect battery negative wire, then open splice (carefully) and look for problem . More than likely it will be very visible. All wires are color coded but if you are color blind leave it alone. Be sure to have some butt splices , tape, and small amt of wire handy.

Sounds like ther is a short to ground in the headlight. Strange

If I were you I would move the wire harness around a bit and see if the problem goes away. If it does then you might look around for a bare wire that touches the frame somewhere.
I have another way of finding shorts but it is not recommended. I hook up a megger which is an ohm meter that puts out about 5000 volts but very low amperage (this thing runs off of a 9 volt battery. Once the megger is hooked up I just run my hand along the wire harness till I get shocked. Viola!, the short is found. If anyone want to try this you MUST UNHOOK THE CONNECTORS TO the CDI ON THE BIKE (and maybe any other electrical sensitive items on the bike.
Good luck,
Winddrifter

My headlight stopped working the last night (no blown fuse or headlight element) and now the battery can't hold a charge.

Have ya actually checked the fuse, or just looked at it?
Recently, my instrument lights & tail lights suddenly quit working. Looked at the fuses, all looked fine.
Wasn't until I took the seat off, for the 3rd time, and found nothing wrong, that I finally checked the fuse. It was blown, yet barely visible as being blown.

And the never ending question.....
Do ya have a maintenance free battery? If not, have ya checked the fluid level and connections?

Jauten1 - Sounds to me like your stator is blown. It's the stator putting out voltage that turns the headlight on. It's possible that your regulator is shorting out, and dropping the voltage of the stator to nil. In any case, you need to follow the fault finding PDF to find out if your stator is the culprit, or the r/r. If it is the r/r, you need to replace it asap, before it takes the stator with it.

Pantherdan - yours isn't the stator, so ignore the above.

What the? BILYUM! Look at the dates on the post before replying, please! We just answered a post from almost a year ago.

HA hA :boxing:

Yup! Sorry about that. Thanks for letting me know.

Doh !!
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