Topic: Blowing fuses

[Johnny5]

Im working on my friends 750K4 and it has a lot of "special" wiring done on it. Like some speaker wire for the turn signals. So Im helping to get the electrical up to snuff. We cleaned the fuse box connections (they were pretty cruddy) and if I slightly wiggle the fuse box, it'll arc and blow the bottom fuse. Is the fuse box grounded to the frame? It's dark out now, but my plan is to unbolt the fuse box and clean the other side up. Seems like it's just dirty.

I also gotta locate a short for the turn signals. If I turn on the turn signals, it'll blow the tail light fuse, yet the taillights still work??? What the heck? Same with the headlight, sometimes the headlight fuse will blow, yet the light will still work.

Any thoughts on this would be appreciated?

[GammaFlat]

The fuse box is not "grounded".  There are 3 circuits / 6 connectors - all should be roughly plus 12 volts.  What you might have is the back of the fuse holder grounding out (not supposed to).  I've seen fuse holders in many stages of "melted-ness" and maybe you have a portion of one of the fuse "grabbers" shifted enough so it's grounding out. 

If you're lucky, it'll ground out on the "fused" side. 

I put a blade fuse holder on my K6 and I'm now convinced I'm building one for each of my bikes - My brother was riding my K7 with me recently and got the dreaded "black dead bike" syndrome - blew the main fuse.  We pulled over, I popped in another fuse and off we went but it's just not cool to assume you're bike is gonna just die sometimes.  My K6 did the same to me before I started to "attack" the electrical system.  Now I'm pretty convinced it'll remain intact for a long time.