A few days ago I saw that my right rear indicator had some kind of loose contact, but it was good enough, till it totally failed.
Now it’s repaired, and the following reasons why it failed and how long it took to repair is also in this blogpost 🙂
On with the story:
I was riding around, minding my own business till I went on and overtook some guy, that was the one moment I saw that my blinker didn’t work. This is commonly seen by a fast blinking light on the dashboard because the resistance isn’t the same anymore.
So I went on and parked my bike at the side of the road to inspect WHY it doesn’t work.
After a bit of a wiggle and trying to push the light back into it’s housing (because it’s vibrating on the exhaust) It worked again!
Then after a few minutes, the same thing happened, and trying the same did work again!
I thought it was nothing serious and rode around with the blinker still working for about a month.
On my (almost) weekly “fun run” the blinker didn’t work anymore, and wiggling and pushing the light back didn’t work at all. So I went on and rode back home to fix it.
To fix it, I had to take the rear rack, topcase carrier, rear stowage cover and the blinker out.
It was easy to remove, but so much harder to put it all together.
I disassembled the blinker, and tried the bulb, which was still intact (which is fortunate considering it’s a halogen bulb vibrating and colliding with the muffler).
The main problem was a bad ground. It was a “wedge ground” and not a soldered one.
I then soldered the ground and extended both wires to get some slack in my wiring harness. It finally worked!
And since I had the light disassembled, I cleaned the reflector from dust.
Putting it all took most of my time. It took me about half an hour to just get the bolt holes aligned using a screwdriver, but once aligned, everything fitted together as they should.
I then tried all my lights, and damn! My right foglight doesn’t work anymore!
I had to get a replacement bulb from the internet, because I didn’t find a store near me that could have those bulbs, but now I’ve found one about 30km’s away.
So I’ve spent about 12€ on 2 lights that normally cost 1,30€ a piece…
Should’ve searched a bit more…
Anyway, it was so much easier to replace the broken foglight bulb. It was snip snip, strip and solder and heatschrink away! Now I have fully functional lighting again!
Hooray for doing your own stuff on your bike!
Thanks for reading, and remember, ride safe!
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