Turn Signal 101

Just spent the last FOUR (4) STINKING HOURS paying for more motorcycle education... :S

Here is the way a turn signal system is supposed to work:

Power comes off the igntion switch into the BROWN subcircuit. A brown lead goes to the turn signal relay. An ORANGE wire comes out of the relay and goes to the left hand switchgear where there is a turn signal switch.

The switch will have two wires coming out. These will generally be green and gray. Typically, the switch is a block with two contacts. The orange hot input is in the center. The gray wire will be on one side and the green on the other so when you move the switch, the block with two contacts will touch ORANGE/GREEN or ORANGE/GRAY. Then power goes through the green or gray wires to the turn signals. They will ground through the main harness to the chassis ground.

Sounds simple enough unless you can't get a darn turn signal system working. The normal culprit on any issue in a turn signal is a bad ground. When you have to put those male bullet connectors on newly installed signals and female connectors on the harness, there is a dandy chance that at least one or more will have a bad connection. The normal way to check the connectors is to put the leads DIRECTLY on the battery terminals before installing. If you have a bad crimp connector, the light won't light in the turn signal. Did that!

OK, the problem I was having is that only one side would flash. I could swap wires and make either side flash but only when the turn signal switch was in the LEFT position. It finally dawned on me to open the switchgear and have a look. To my surpise, this stylized drawing at the bottom is what I saw. The orange was on the LEFT with the GRAY lead in the middle and the GREEN on the right. Remember that block contact that only covers TWO (2) of the wire leads? It can only cover the orange/gray. When you move the switch (which I couldn't draw well) to the other side, it covers the GRAY/GREEN!

How the heck was this ever supposed to work? It can't, near as I can tell. Anyway, thought I would take the time to vent/rant and hopefully this will help someone else. I pulled another switchgear out of my junk box and wired it in and I think all is well as far as this part of the project.

del

I have been mulling this issue over. In retrospect, when installing turn signals, I guess it would be prudent to do a continuity check between the orange and green wires on the connector itself. Then do one on the orange/gray after moving the turn signal switch to the other side. This will point out any problem with the switch itself and essentially would be a quick way to eliminate this as a problem. FWIW: The right hand switchgear I ended up using was from a KZ650 and has a "HAZARD" button you pull out to disable and push in to enable. The button is square and red. In any case, both the gray and green wires have leads that are spliced into the normal gray and green leads so that when the hazard switch is closed, you can get both lights to blink at the same time by just pushing the switch in (to close it) and turning on the turn signals to either side... they have the normal aux lighting hot wire (orange/green) which I didn't use. This goes to yet another flasher relay and I don't see the need for it.