Topic: Turn signal ground faulting

[eigenvector]

I've been battling a blowing main fuse off and on for a while now.  I tried about everything.  I went at it again this weekend and to my surprise I found that the ground strap on the rear right turn signal was loose.  The screw that holds it down and connects it to the body was loose.
"Okay" says I, I tighten it down and now at least my rear right signal comes on - which before it wasn't.  Seems reasonable to me - no ground path, no way for the current to flow.

That said - it appears that my signals now work.  Just confirmed that on a 10 mile ride tonight.  So now I'm left wondering - would a loose ground path on the turn signal be enough to blow the main fuse?  I can see a loose wire not allowing the bulb the light up - but blowing the main?  What I'm trying to do is confirm that the two events are related or more likely in the process of fixing the ground strap I also put shrink tubing around the wire to cover up any cracks in the insulation.

[mystic_1]

Hmm, were there actual cracks or was the heat-shrink more of a proactive measure?

I ask because if the insulation on that wire is bad, then the rest of the harness should also be considered suspect.

A short or intermittent contact in a turn signal grounding wire shouldn't blow the fuse, methinks, but if you have brittle and cracking insulation on a power line somewhere, that totally would.

mystic_1

[eigenvector]

I completely replaced the harness with new wiring, but the wires coming from the signals are whatever was there when the signals were made.

I really want to rewire the bulb sockets, but didn't see a way to do that.  I clipped the wires as close to the socket as I dared and soldered in new wire - but I find that an imperfect solution to simply rewiring the socket itself.

[flybox1]

would a loose ground path on the turn signal be enough to blow the main fuse?  I can see a loose wire not allowing the bulb the light up - but blowing the main? 

yes.  happened to me on my old stock signals.
every time i thumbed the switch over, it would blow the fuse.

[martin99]

I just recently had a problem with my turn signals. It all worked as it should, except if I turned the headlight on the instrument lights would flash in the wrong direction. Indicate right, and the left warning light flashes. Indicate left, and the right warning light flashes. Turn the headlight off and all is normal again.

Anyways, I decided to live with it, thinking I'd have a look at the wiring next time I had the headlight out. I then happened to glance at the fusebox one day and saw that the main fuse seemed to have had some kind of incident, the insulation had obviously got very hot but the fuse itself hadn't blown.

At this point I thought it best to get into the headlight bucket, I couldn't think of any other electrical gremlin other than the turn signal issue. What I found was that the earth wire coming out of the main harness had come away from the four-way connector and was just dangling. Replaced the bullet connector and plugged it back in and all has been well with my turn signals and fuses since.

Scary to think the fuse could get so hot and not blow

[eigenvector]

That's catching on fire territory there.  Only time I have seen that is when I tried to jump start my bike (not my Honda, another bike) with the wires used for the battery tender.  There's no facepalm icon - but yeah that was not my most shining moment in life.