Headlight Problems 1984 Venture

[Dokester]

My headlight is not working on my bike. When the headlight started to go out they would work every once in a while. The bulb is fine. Is there a fuse box or something else that might be causing the light not to work?

 

 

This is a new bike for me. What is the easiest way to jumpstart the bike? The battery is run down and I need to get it started. How do I get to the battery?

[IH Truck Guy]

With the key off,spray some lube around the start button and push it in and out.There is a circuit that cuts out the headlite when you start the bike.Check the posts from the last couple of days.Someone else had this same problem.

[Condor]

If all else fails you're gonna have to take out the CPU in the dash and resolder the pc board. Or.... pic up another dash off Ebay and swap out the whole dash. My '83 only had high beam, which seems to be a fairly common ailment. I had planned on doing to solder mod, but found a low mile dash and swapped the whole dash. Took about an hour. I now have full function on the head light, plus a lot newer bike becasue the odometer had about 15,000 less on it. just so no one thinks I'm pulling a fast one, I wrote the milage of both odometers on the back side of the dash before installing it.....

[Neil86]

Okay....heres the thread on the starter switch / headlight issue.

http://www.venturerider.org/forum/showthread.php?threadid=20644

 

• I'd first try that....if that doesn't solve it,
  
• check the headlight fuse......fuse box on top of battery....if the labels are gone...you want the 10 Amp fuse with the red/yellow wire exiting. Inspect the fuse and the fuse clip holders....sometimes the old fuse clips oxidize, heat up, and lose tension on the fuse, so you get intermittent headlight loss on any bump. This happened on my 83, took awhile to track down. If you have good voltage on both sides of the fuse holder...
  
• then as Condor mentions, solder cracks on the CMS board can be an issue. Basically on a 1st gen the power for all headlight, brakelight and tailight circuits end up flowing through the CMS unit so it can "monitor" the bulbs.

[bcradio]

The Venture has a "Reserve lighting unit" that is supposed to monitor the headlight and give an indication if it fails. (Personally I can tell when the light goes off; it gets dark in front of the motorcycle...) I removed mine because it caused the headlight to be dim.

 

To disconnect the unit, here ya go. Look at the connector in the wiring harness and find the blue/black and blue/yellow wires. Strip a small section of insulation from those two wires and twist them together and solder. Or, if you are serious about this, just cut the wires right off the connector and splice the blue/black to the blue/yellow. Now you have headlights again.

On my venture, the removal resulted in the hi beam indicator not operating. No problem, and the remedy is easy: The indicator for the high beam has two wires coming from it, a r/y and y. (red/yellow and yellow) the r/y goes to a 9 pin plug. The yellow goes to the connector where the RSU was. The easiest fix is: before cutting the rest of the wires from the connector (other than the ones you are going to short together to bypass the RSU), connect the yellow/green to the yellow ( I built a jumper from the old wires). Then remove the r/y wire on the lamp side of the 9 pin connector, and connect it to the black wire in the middle of the 9 pin connector. (Ground). Originally, the yellow wire was pulled low by the RSU to indicate high beam.

[Venturous Randy]

Open the gas lid and remove the screw between the filler and seat. Once the screw is out, push the cover forward and lift it up. You will see the battery under the cover.

You are going to get a lot of information tossed your way and if it does not make sense to you, ask more questions. Unless you have a lot of money to pay someone else to work on your bike, or screw it up, just keep in mind that these old bikes are not for the faint of heart, or mechanically challenged.

RandyA