electrical problems

[kikkoman22]

i bought a 2000 katana 600 about 2 months ago and ran fine for a while but now my headlights will not come on i checked the fuses and they were all good is this somthing i can fix my self or should i take it to a shop

[joe]

You could check some simple things first, before you take it to a shop. Make sure the connections at the bulbs are good. Check the bulbs; it is unusual for bulbs to burn out at the same time, but hey, it can happen (check with an ohmeter, don't rely strictly on sight). You can do a search on here to find a PDF of the maintenance manual. The manual should contain wiring diagrams that will assist you. Also, find where the headlights ground and make sure the connection is good.

[DumbLuck]

check grounds, the bulb socket itself (they like to melt with higher wattage bulbs), check connector blocks (pull apart, clean, firmly reseat), use a ohm meter to check your fuse (some may look good but are still toast) and bulb. after that get a wiring diagram and start poking around with your meter set to DC current 20v.

[ckenwright]

Make sure that your start button is popping back out. The switch can get stuck in a little and your headlights will not work.

[The CyberPoet]

98-04 Kats (only later ones kill the headlights via the starter button):

1. If the bike has enough juice to spin the starter, the battery is presumed not the problem.

2. Check the fuses. There are separate fuses for both high and low beam, so you should never get stuck without at least one type of beam working.

3. Check the bulbs themselves to see if the filaments burnt out. If it won't work on high nor low beam, this is unlikely to be the cause (given 4 filaments on two bulbs all giving out at the same time, but it is possible). The metal base of the bulb is imprinted with a wattage (low/high, e.g. - 55/60 watts). If the base of the bulb has numbers higher than 55/60, remove the bulbs permanently and replace them -- odds are they damaged your wiring and/or their female sockets, as well as possibly pins in the wiring harness connectors (Molex connectors).

4. High/low beam switch in the control pod. This switch has four wires soldered onto it -- if any of the solder connections came lose, the bulbs will die. Clean, resolder, then pack with dielectric grease before reassembly.

5. If you still haven't found it with the above, that leaves wiring problems, either at the connectors (such as the 20-pin connector above the headlights from the main wiring harness), or the wires themselves. For some stupid-fool-reason, the fuses are set so that they won't blow for over-rated bulbs, but the wires themselves will burn up (cooking the insulation on them -- see bulb replacement advice in #2).

Cheers
=-= The CyberPoet

[kikkoman22]

hey thanks guys i whent through the wiring and found a loose connection as soon as i added pressure the headlights both high and low beams came on

i used my booster box to start it turns out i had a weak battery. i hooked her up to a battery charger and now she runs like a champ

[md86]

Nice work . Now think about what a shop woulda charged you for that .....

[The CyberPoet]

Nice work . Now think about what a shop woulda charged you for that .....

Or how a quarter's worth of dielectric grease many years ago would have spared all of that heart-ache

Cheers
=-= The CyberPoet

[Black_peter]

Moved to electrics/wiring for search reasons, fixed spelling..

Nice work . Now think about what a shop woulda charged you for that .....

Worse if he was a woman. A woman called into Car Talk and described an experiment she and her boyfriend did. They pulled a fuse and took the car to different shops for repair. All the shops the boyfriend brought the car to, just identified the missing fuse, some even gave him one. Half of the shops she took it to gave her estimates of up to $150 to repair.. (the other half were honest)..