Its DARK when the lights go out

[Flyinfool]

Cruzin down a dark country road and I hit the high beam and the headlight simply goes off.

 

Dang it gets real dark and scary at 60 MPH and no lights with road construction all around.

 

The first thought that entered my mind was all of the discussions about HID failures.

 

My first reflex action is that if I just did something and did not like the result, first thing is to undo it. So I switched back to low beam the light flickered a couple of times but did not come back on. By now I am down to about 30 MPH and still hard on the brakes.

While still breaking I wiggled the hi/lo switch and the headlight came back to life just as I was coming to a stop.

 

So as long as I was stopped any how I did some quickie diagnostics, switching to hi would still cause the light to turn off, jiggling the switch I could get it to come on in hi, switching to lo would make the light go out, jiggling the switch I could get it to go back on.

 

So I got it on in lo and hotfooted it back home, praying that a bump in the road would not make it go out again.

 

So I guess that this weekend I get to tear the switch apart and hope that it is just a mater of cleaning and lubing the contacts.

 

It was NOT the HIDs fault it was the bike that told it to turn off.

 

I guess that I will be adding some driving lights so that if the big light ever goes out again, I will not be left in the dark, It could have been real bad had this happened on a curve instead of a straight.

[Bubber]

Maybe it didn't restart because it was just to hot? ...........or not?

[Snaggletooth]

That was why I changed my driving lights from being tied into the Hi beam circuit to an independent harness. If the big bulbs go I still got 110 watts available up front. Haven't found a dark road yet since I installed the Hella H9's but it's nice to have a Plan B.

 

Glad you were is a good spot and got it worked out.

 

Mike

[JoeKanuck]

I had the same thing happen to me but thank goodness I wasn't on the road yet and I have fog lights to get me home. Turned out to the the starter switch. I bought some cheapo LED driving lights which will become my daytime running lights and should provide enough light to keep me from hitting anything nasty if my headlight drops out.

 

I will be putting my headlight on a separate switch and relay.

[DesertRider]

My hi/low switch did the same thing a few years back to me but mine would always work on low but rarely worked on hi. Worked on it a few times but could never get it to stay working so I added a second wiring circuit and fuse and mounted a toggle switch on the left compartment cover for my hi / low switch.

[krome rose]

http://i824.photobucket.com/albums/zz162/SunnyblueVR/birthday/Candle.gif

 

Brandy

[Venturous Randy]

Last summer in the middle of the day I was pulling up a hill to a stop sign and everything went dead. I found that I had blown the main fuse. Fortunately, I had tools and an ohm/voltmeter with me. Since I did not detect a solid ground on the fuse wire, I carefully bypassed the fuse. I started the bike and carefully rode it home. I got some more fuse strips at the auto place and replaced the strip and have probably put 5,000 miles on the bike and it has not blown again.

One thing that I did a while back was put a set of running lights that are fused, on a switch and run straight to the battery. This way, if I ever blow a main fuse again, at least I have some lights and I run the driving lights all the time at night.

RandyA