Headlights and Brake lights no workie

[nodestiny]

Hey gang! So my scooter died myseteriously one day... no spark. Changed the coil/plug to the bando one, no luck. Tore EVERYTHING down and traced every wire to find it the was the pickup sensor. Replaced it and the stator with an ebay one, quality difference was much higher (the coil wiring on the stator was well done, VS the stock one looked like somebody drunk could have done a better job).

Anywho, got everything up and running, but I noticed I have no brake lights and no headlights at all! I looked at the wiring map on the scooter and did the process of elimination... I saw something called the "Light Switch"... not to be confused with the "Dimmer Switch"... I have no light switch to my knowledge. The only thing electrically I did differently was rid of the little clock that did not work properly anyawys, which had 3 wires going to it (I think one was to illuminate). Also, I think my fuel empty light is not working, but not sure on that one yet.

any suggestions?

[snakebit]

Hook the clock back up. Did you mean brake light or tail light?
On a lot of these bikes the headlight, tail light, and instrument
lights run off the stator and the brake light, turn signals gas gauge
and horn run off the battery. Since your oem stator seemed like a
piece of junk you may have done damage to your voltage regulator.
Don’t just run out and buy a new one, check all wires and connectors first.

[abscooters]

Jul 27, 2009 16:00:22 GMT -5 nodestiny said:

Hey gang! So my scooter died myseteriously one day... no spark. Changed the coil/plug to the bando one, no luck. Tore EVERYTHING down and traced every wire to find it the was the pickup sensor. Replaced it and the stator with an ebay one, quality difference was much higher (the coil wiring on the stator was well done, VS the stock one looked like somebody drunk could have done a better job).

Anywho, got everything up and running, but I noticed I have no brake lights and no headlights at all! I looked at the wiring map on the scooter and did the process of elimination... I saw something called the "Light Switch"... not to be confused with the "Dimmer Switch"... I have no light switch to my knowledge. The only thing electrically I did differently was rid of the little clock that did not work properly anyawys, which had 3 wires going to it (I think one was to illuminate). Also, I think my fuel empty light is not working, but not sure on that one yet.

any suggestions?

Go back to the stock stator and just keep the new pickup coil, you probably got a bad stator, very very common for ebay stators. They may look good but don't find the problems by looking at them


The lighting phase, the charging phase & the coil feed voltage are all different circuits on that stator. It is possible your lighting circuit is bad, or it is possible you just got a bad connection in the white or yellow cuircuits leading out of the stator.

[nodestiny]

Something else I should mention, the battery is pretty well worthless since I bought it. It wont hold ANY bit of charge. Just enough to maybe honk the horn and what not. On the old stator, my turn signals would not stay blinking after I came to a stop, where this stator has no issue with it. Nothing more than an FYI!

abscooters: Is it possible to simply test those wires by either checking running voltage from them or bypass them and hook the headlights/tail lights up to the battery directly for testing?

[phetish]

Pretty easy to check for a bum stator... just check the voltage at the battery with a voltmeter.

With the engine running and ABOVE idle, you should see about 14v on the terminals of the battery. If it's around 13ish, that's not bad, but not great. If it's much below 13, you've got a bum stator.

Check the battery. With the scooter off - put the voltmeter on the battery terminals. you should see around 12v. The lower it is, the closer the battery is to kicking off. Not a perfect test though, as a bad stator might not be pushing enough charge back on to the battery.

[nodestiny]

I have no doubt the stator is at least working for the battery. The battery itself, if I try to start it with the push-button, just cranks over MAYBE 1/2 to a full turn and stops... not even enough power to get that turned over more than once! But kick start it and it works like a champ. If I put my battery charger on the battery, it obviously has no problem cranking over continuously.

[nodestiny]

OK SO...

I slapped in the clock w/ its 3 wires. It was a no go. No tail, no head, no illumination lights. Though, I did notice something (think it was doing it before the clock anyways)... when I click on the highbeams while cruising AND the turn signal is on, the high beam light indicator would come on and the gauges would illuminate, but no dice on head/tail light that I could tell.

Today, I threw in the stock stator w/ the new sensor and flywheel. Turned the key, kick started it, and BAM, a headlight! Then BAM, no headlight... but was running all the same. Could not for the life of me to get the headlight to come back on, was on for a second tops. BUT the good news is, now the illumination is working.. no tail light still.

Traced every single wire front to back... could not find anything unusual from it. Went to the volt reg and measured, greed = ground, red = battery and is seeing voltage, yellow and white see nothing.

This is freakin frustrating, batman.

Any suggestions from here?

[phetish]

Yellow and white are your AC circuit for the headlights (and possibly other items - instrument cluster lights, etc). No juice there and that would explain why the headlights don't work.

What is the voltage coming out of the stator? There should be a 3plug harness with 2 bullet connectors coming out of the stator. Check the voltage there with the engine rpms ABOVE idle. At idle rpms the stator doesn't produce much juice.

Then check the voltage at the plug going IN to the regulator.

Then check the voltage coming OUT of the regulator.

If no juice past the regulator, you might have a bad regulator. I've seen ways of testing the regulator, but no regulator I've had actually matches the specs that have been published A regulator is $15 so they're not expensive.

The Regulator/Rectifier does 2 things - Converts AC from the stator to DC, and limits the AC voltage going to the rest of the AC circuit. It is possible that your regulator/rectifier is converting to DC correctly, but is dropping the AC voltage too much.

DOUBLE CHECK your harness connections! On my Stator connection, one of the connections was loose and would cause the headlights to flicker. I ended up having to cut the plug out of the loop and just connecting the wires directly.

Good Luck!

[nodestiny]

That explains why I got shocked! Didn't realize it was AC... man I hate getting shocked...

Anywho, Ill do some testing on it soon and let ya know. Is there any regulator I should go with if it should be bad, like a certain company/brand to buy from?

[snakebit]

I am having about the same problem. Sometimes lights work, sometimes they don’t.
However I think the don’t part is now permanent. I have not had any starting problem
because the scoot starts so easy and the charging system worked enough of the time to
keep the batt. charged.

The last time the lights stopped working I decided to check it out. Since it is real hard to find something wrong with something that is working. Started at batt. = 12.65 volts DC, increased speed, no change (not good) . Checked AC voltage coming out of stator, white and yellow wires = 6..5 (low). Checked frame ground were neg. batt., neg starter and green ground wire connect. Found frame surface painted (I fixed that) Batt. still not charging. Checked voltage at stator again = 34 increased speed = 44 (to high). Checked other end going into volt reg., Yellow wire 4.5, Did not know what to think since the yellow wire connects to a lot of other things. Now the strange part, the white wire showed 6.5. The white wire is a direct connection between the stator and the volt reg. With both ends disconnected I checked to see if white was grounded(it was not). Checked for continuity (yes).

Question 1. Is my stator shot? 2. Is it possible that the wire is partly severed allowing continuity but not voltage transfer. I am confused ( not an unusual state).

Jerry

[phetish]

Nodestiny -

Yep, part is DC and part is AC. What is AC and what is DC varies with the scooter manufacturer. About the only thing you can count on being AC are the headlights and instrument lights.

As for a particular regulator, just get one that works. They are all pretty much the same quality (crappy ). They are differentiated by the number of pins on the regulator plug, so make sure that you get one that matches your wiring plug. I tried going to all the different Japanese motorcycle dealers locally and no one could match it. You'll pretty much have to order it online unless you are lucky enough to find a local scooter shop that stocks parts. Only 1 in my town stocks parts. Everyone else will order them for you if you pay before ordering, and then they just order from the same online places you can.

Snakebit -

You might not have a bad stator - Part of the role of the regulator/rectifier is to drop the voltage coming from the stator down to 12v, so your stator should be producing a higher voltage. I'm not sure that 34-44v is outside of the normal range. I would start tracing the wiring from the stator forward and figure out where the voltage drops to 6.5.

DOUBLECHECK your plugs and connections! It is possible that an individual wire doesn't actually connect securely at the plug. I've personally had that problem - had to cut the plug out in order to get a good connection.

Disclaimer I'm not that good at tracking down electrical issues - especially AC/DC problems.

You might want to start a new thread - your symptoms may be similar, but I suspect your problem is different. I suspect you have an AC wire that is partially grounding out on the frame someplace. That could be anywhere from the stator to anywhere else on the scoot. It has been seen where the wires at the stator (behind the flywheel) get crushed during manufacturing and cause shorts there.

As I understand it, the AC is a loop that doesn't actually ground any place. Since the yellow and white are part of the same loop, you shouldn't see a difference in voltages.

How were you testing them separately?

[snakebit]

Thanks for the reply:

I too thought the white and yellow were a loop, and coming directly from the
Stator the voltage was the same. As for as checking them separately I guess you
can’t.

I disconnected the yellow wire from the large cluster plug going to the
Instrument panel. Now it shows the batt. is charging and I am getting the
proper readings coming off my reg. So it appears my problem is in the
instrument panel or hi-low beam switch. I should have isolated the stator
reg. circuit from the rest of the system to start with. I have been away from
the bike game to long. Thanks for the help.

Snakebit
Jerry

[snakebit]

The idiot that installed the mirrors pinched a yellow wire. Then the afore mentioned
idiot ( Oh! hell that was me) while moving mirror back and forth to adjust rubbed all
the insulation off of the wire. The final death blow came the other day when I tighten
the mirror down real good.

This wire goes to a clear looking light bulb (bright red when on) about the size of a
kitchen match head and is activated along with all turn signal lights when you push the emergency flasher button while the engine is running (how cute).

I never did like having these wires running up past the brake levers to the mirrors, worried they might someday interfere with the operation of the brakes. Since no
law requires having turn signals in the mirrors, mind will now serve as reflectors only.

[phetish]

Woohoo! glad to hear that I wasn't completely off the mark on your issue, snakebit!

Mind telling us how you tracked it down to the mirrors? or was it just a matter of following the footsteps of the "idiot mechanic"?

[snakebit]

Elementary Watson;

After removing the AC circuit (yellow wire) from the cluster going
to the handle bars and determining that to be the area of my trouble.
I commenced to remove the plastic covering to gain access to the site
of my problem. The first step was to remove the mirrors. After removing
the second mirror, using my superior stills of observation and keen eye
for detail, I noticed stuck to the surface of the mount the mirror was
attached to, the mashed, twisted and mangled remains of a yellow wire.
Clearly evidence of a brutal and viscous attack by an incompetent
mechanic.

[rapidjim]

Great job electrical problems can drive you nuts! It is worse when someone else causes it.

[nodestiny]

Wish I can say I have had similar luck.

So I changed the volt regulator. No change

Any last words before I rid of this scoot?