Poor High Beam Circuit

JOHNARISMAN said:

I recently burned out my left high beam bulb after 40,000 miles and thought that's an easy fix. Problem is that after I changed the bulb the light still did not come on. I pulled the bulb back out and bench tested it and it worked fine. I hooked up my volt meter and tested the voltage at the plug and ground and was only reading 4.91 volts. Has anyone experienced this problem?

Any ideas are welcome so that I might avoid pulling the headlight assembly to check wiring.

John

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alegerlotz said:

Sorry for the potentially dumb question, but.... Is your low beam (center) bulb working as it should? If that's burned out then the bike does weird things with the high beams (such as using one of the high beams all the time). I'd start by verifying that, and if there's an issue, replace that bulb first. I'm sure you've checked it already, but there's no harm in asking in case you haven't.

If your low beam is working fine and the issue is only when you flip the high beams on, then I've got nothin'.

Good luck!

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Omega Man said:

How was the voltage with the bike running?
OM

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JOHNARISMAN said:

alegerlotz

I want to say thanks for your input about the low beam. It was working, at least for a period of time. I came home today and tried a couple of things. I fed a better ground to the bad high beam. No change. Then I fed a line voltage from the good high beam to the bad and voila, the left high beam came on but then I noticed the low beam was out. It had been working! That bulb wasn't very old but I pulled it out and and damn if it wasn't bad. I changed it out and everything works great now.

Thank you for your input and thanks to everyone who has taken the time to offer assistance. This is the second time I'ved used the forum when I was completely out of ideas and the second time my problem was solved by someone who has taken the time to respond. Thank you all. This is an invaluable resource.

John

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