No Blinkers

[Guest]

Hi, new to the forum been lurking for a little while. Got several bikes, they are my therapy. Purchased a 1979 1000e and have been trying to trouble shoot the no signal issue. Signals worked when i purchased it but they decided to stop working. Ive got a brown wire(coming from regulator-rectifier) and a light colored wire to the signal relay. Checked the wire diagram and shows a orange green striped and light blue at the relay. Not sure why the brown wire. cant measure any voltage at relay. found a loose orange green striped wire by the battery box with voltage. Any tips on where to start.

Thanks

 

[Steve]

Not sure where the brown wire came from, but it definitely NOT near your "rectifier-regulator". One reason is that you don't have a "rectifier-regulator", you have separate units, one rectifier and one regulator. Neither one of them has a brown wire connected to it.

There is only one brown wire on the bike, it runs from the ignition switch to the tail light.

The orange/green wire should feed the turn signal flasher. The light blue wire will be the 'flashing' output, which would be sent to the TSCU (turn signal control unit), where it then gets routed to the left handlbar switch which will tell it which side to light up.

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[Guest]

Thanks for your quick response Steve. I will see if i can post some pics.

 

[Guest]

Trying to upload pics (IMG_1622.JPG)from my computer , getting message upload failed.......looking for help

 

[Rich82GS750TZ]

Best way to post pics on the forum is to use a pic hosting site like Imgur, so that you can copy the BBCode and paste it into your post. It's not straightforward, so I've written instructions, linked in my signature.

 

[Guest]

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Here are some pics. A lot of wire colors don't match with wiring diagram from bikecliffs site. I think someone has replaced some wiring.

 

[Gorminrider]

Is that a new R/R? Someone may have rewired to suit it... I know Steve said this bike has reg and rect as separate, but I see a gang of 3 blue (usually a gang of 3 means stator AC output whatever colour ) a red (regulated output?) and a brown which might be voltage sense wire coming from the finned component....but thats all a guess and I'm not familiar with the '79 1000

I also see a loose wire orange with ....green stripe? brown? I can't quite tell, though your gallery is pretty good.

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I think you'll have to get a multimeter out and start checking if that brown is a + polarity and what fuse is supplying it. etc. Brown usually is + so someone might have tapped it as a logical extra supply.

 

[Guest]

Is that a new R/R? Someone may have rewired to suit it... I know Steve said this bike has reg and rect as separate, but I see a gang of 3 blue (usually a gang of 3 means stator AC output whatever colour ) a red (regulated output?) and a brown which might be voltage sense wire coming from the finned component....but thats all a guess and I'm not familiar with the '79 1000

I also see a loose wire orange with ....green stripe? brown? I can't quite tell, though your gallery is pretty good.

.View attachment 61755

I think you'll have to get a multimeter out and start checking if that brown is a + polarity and what fuse is supplying it. etc. Brown usually is + so someone might have tapped it as a logical extra supply.

That loose wire I found is orange with green stripe that always has voltage on it with the key on. That brown wire goes to the turn signal relay and never has voltage. I'll have another look and see if I can see where the black and red wires are going that are with the 3 blue wires. The blinkers worked when i brought the bike home a few weeks ago and the loose wire may have broke free when I was tidying up the harness. I don't recall noticing a voltage regulator but will have a closer look . Should the regulator be on the electrical plate holder with the fuse box, starter relay etc ? What is a r/r ?

 

[Rich82GS750TZ]

The large black finned block to the left of your fuse box is your R/R. Regulator/Rectifier. Looks like the previous owner already replaced your separate Regulator and Rectifier with a more modern combined R/R, and probably not a good one (read Shindengen SH775). Looks like he got creative with some other wiring in the process. That’s a mess. Good luck.

 

[Gorminrider]

Well, the orange/green stripe is going to be the clue. It comes direct from the fuse panel and from there is going to power "other things"- I don't have your diagram handy but you'll have to get into the circuit diagram to see just what the PO did.

just a wild guess is that you might have automatic-off signals on that bike so perhaps the Previous Owner was trying to bypass them ... Follow that brown and find where it's been.

 

[Guest]

Ya the brown wire comes from the r/r and terminates in the signal flasher relay . So the r/r should have 5 wires correct? mine has 3 blue 1 red 1 black and the brown.

 

[Steve]

The charging circuit does appear to have been upgraded a bit from stock. Points given to someone for the effort. If you want to dig in and clean it up a bit more, it would be good to change the R/R (that's Rectifier/Regulator) to a Shindengen SH775. We can help you with the shopping process, if you wish.

The turn signal flasher (relay) is the two-terminal device in your first picture. It <should> have a light blue wire and an orange/green wire. The orange/green wire is fed by the SIGNALS fuse, which is why it is hot when the key is on. (That fuse also powers the horn and brakes.)

The TSCU has two bundles of wires coming from it. One has six wires, the other has four. One of the wires in the six-pack is brown, but has a yellow stripe. It leads from the TSCU to the left-side handlebar switch. Follow the 'brown' wire that is on your flasher to see where it goes.

The mess around your R/R appears to be the result of removing the separate units and installing the single combined unit. It really could be cleaned up. The bundle of three wires (blue?) should be coming directly from the stator. The red wire would be the 'hot' wire. The black wire would be the 'ground' wire. The brown wire is likely a "sense" wire that should be connected to a 'hot' wire that is NOT 'hot' when the key is off. To verify that it is a sense wire, you will need the bike running with a voltmeter attached to the battery. Connect the brown wire to the battery + terminal and note the voltage. Remove the wire, the voltage should go up. Assuming about 13.5 volts at idle (with wire attached), it might rise to 15 or so with it removed.

When it comes time to replace the battery, do yourself and your bike a couple of favors. First, you don't need that seventh port. I think the first GSes that used that were the 750s and 1100s that appeared in 1980. That port was for a sensor that determined you needed to add water to the battery. A rather optimistic feature, as it only checked the one cell. The second favor would be to ditch the wet-cell battery and get a sealed AGM unit. Note that "AGM" is a construction style, not a brand name.

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[Gorminrider]

Ya the brown wire comes from the r/r and terminates in the signal flasher relay . So the r/r should have 5 wires correct? mine has 3 blue 1 red 1 black and the brown

5 wires is common on R/Rs. So is 4 or 6. But if you can you see any numbers and letters on it, it'd give a strong clue as to which particular one it is. That one could be a Chinesium one sold on Amazon but it may be the original these are cloned to look like too. if you can find it online (use the picture function on your search engine) you might find which it is with a diagram.

You will want to be careful with generalisations Black is a "hot" wire(+) and green is ground(-)on old Hondas . Many knock-offsuse the Honda code. Red is generally + output.


The brown wire is wrong for sure.

Since the previous owner lost his wits in here, he may have swapped wires in the connector. However, where the 3 connectors from the stator go are often obvious which is a help.


A 5 wire R/Rdoesn't have a "sense" wire in my experience but 6 wire R/Rs can..

 

[bull958]

My guess would be its a Honda R/R with the sense wire. PO tapped into the signals for power. Connect the green/orange to the flasher unit along with the brown on the one side and viola. Of course as I said, thats just a guess but seems logical(at least to me).

 

[Guest]

So the brown wire from the signal relay to the r/r is the source input(12v dc) . I now know what all the wires do thanks for all the help. 3blue are 12v ac input, the red is 12vdc supply, black ground and brown (source)12vdc input. Ive noticed the fuse box a little melted around the tension clips that hold the fuses. When I turn the key on (bike not running) after a few minutes the fuse clips are so hot you can't touch them. Measured voltage at all fuses at around 13v. WHY ARE all THE FUSE HOLDERS SO DAMM HOT? It can't be amps because the fuses aren't blowing. The p/o hand 25amp fuses for all. I changed them to the proper amperage. The joys of owning old bikes. The the bike wouldn't run right and I cleaned the carbs and put o-ring kit (robertbarr's) and the bike sounds really good now . Just got to get the electrical troubles sorted.

Thanks

 

[Gorminrider]

So the brown wire from the signal relay to the r/r is the source input(12v dc)

My guess would be its a Honda R/R with the sense wire. PO tapped into the signals for power. Connect the green/orange to the flasher unit along with the brown on the one side and viola. Of course as I said, thats just a guess but seems logical(at least to me).

Yes it might be. Perhaps the bare orange/green got pulled out of the spade-connector shared with that Brown.

But without knowing what R/R it is, it's hard to be sure. If it's a bad Chinesium Honda one (6 connections) it could already be blown. The ground, sense and output wires could all be jacked into the wrong places too.

"Is the battery charging?" is my question before worrying about the signals in this issue.

Hot fuses? Heat always involves current ...ie WATTS=V*A just like a baseboard heater... where the current isn't high enough to blow fuses, it's usually from the crimped connectors..broken strands, loose screws holding them AND Take the fusebox off and look underneath for trouble.

I'm Glad you have the fuses correct now but (gloomy thought) it may be too late if the P/Os over-capacity 25amps have melted things elsewhere.

 

[Guest]

The battery is charging. When the brown wire has no voltage on it the voltage at the battery increases . So I did some searching on the hot fuses and found that voltage drop causes heat, so i'll check for voltage drop across fuses and connectors.

 

[Gorminrider]

Voltage drop is an indication of "resistance". If you draw a lot of amps through a high resistance, you produce heat. And yes, a voltage drop across those connections should be 0.
But the fuse,connectors and wire and the actual intended loads are all components of a circuit. The sum of all the voltage drops in the circuit = the supply. (the battery and charging system)

An example of drawing a lot of amps through a faulty connection would be:
A headlight draws 5 amps. Ideally, tested at it's connector, it shows the same Voltage drop as the power supply...However, In the same circuit are switches, connections and wire. If ANY of these "extras" show a VD- a resistance-, they will be consuming power as heat. Their VD summed with the headlight's VD always equal the supply's Voltage. So, the headlight is dimmer and the switch/connector, or wire is warm to hot... Especially so as a low resistance thing like a headlight looks almost like a short to a frayed wire, corroded switch etc.. That's why your fuses aren't blowing. It's not really a short circuit on them... but there's enough current passing through the fault to create heat.

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the explanation. All the fuses are hot so Im thinking it has to be a condition common to all the circuits. This is all new to me ......learning as Im going. I have several bikes but never had electrical gremlins like this one !

 

[Steve]

Need to make sure terminology is correct so you might understand function a bit better. :-k

So the brown wire from the signal relay to the r/r is the source input(12v dc) .

It's not quite and "input". It is a "sense" wire that should be connected to a switched power source. That orange/green wires IS your switched power source, so the brown wire should be connected to it at the turn signal flasher.

3blue are 12v ac input, ...

Please measure the voltage as part of your troubleshooting. You should have about 75v AC, not 12.

the red is 12vdc supply, ...

True, except it is the R/R that is supplying, so it should be labeled "12v DC OUTPUT".

black ground

This is true, IF it is a Honda R/R, which was a common upgrade.

... and brown (source)12vdc input.

It's not a "source" of anything, it's a SENSE wire. The output of the R/R can change a bit, based on what voltage is SENSED by this wire. That is why disconnecting that wire will increase voltage, as what it senses is lower than desired.

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