Topic: cm185-every bulb is blown

[73hutch]

i'm helping a friend with his newly acquired cm185. we discovered that every bulb is blown on the bike. headlight, tail, turns, controls. it's runs fine though. is there a something in the electrical system that could have made this happen? maybe a common problem?  i had a few random turn signal bulbs, we put them in and they worked. we didn't want to buy a new head light and just have it blow out. any ideas?

[kirkn]

I had the exact same problem on a '78 CM185T.  Turns out the PO had put a 12-volt battery in the bike and it's a 6-volt bike.  Every single bulb blown.

I got the bike for free and this was one of the reasons - the bulbs all needed replacing.  I replaced everything with 12-volt (accidentally.  I didn't know it was a '6-volt' bike) and the bike ran perfectly.  It was MONTHS later that I learned it was "supposed" to be a 6-volt bike. 

I never had any issues at all, but then, my commute at that time was 30 mile one way of 60mph running.  Never had any charging issues, etc.