Vf700f brief short------> dead short------>> no power to headlight, park light, taillight

So in my ever so perfect manner, I don't realize that the new front light bullet connectors which didn't come with a rubber insulator weren't completely covered by the female insulator.
Either this or only swapping wires for one side when determining the brightest side of the bulb caused a short.
No pop but lights went out and I immediately shut the switch off.

Set the front lights back to where both were both were the same checked for shorts , bare spots in the front where I was working, covered the bare spots.

Turned the key back on and got a little puff of smoke from toward the back around the relays behind the battery also blew the main fuse.

Fixed the fuse, found a battery tender plug with an Inline blade fuse holder. At some point probably years ago, the connector got tucked into the front chain cover where the grease held it firmly . Lol removed it from the battery terminals and used the fuse holder in place of the 30amp strip fuse at the starter relay.

After testing for a short to the main, I put in a 20 amp fuse where the 30 amp fuse was.
Now all works well with the exception of the head light (fuse A '83 vf750 wiring diagram), running lights, meter light and tail light (fuse D).

The above fuses didn't blow which tells me the short happened before the fuse box.

I can only be led to think that a wire has lost its insulation and shorted or possibly there is a related relay that has failed.

I am working on tracing back through the wiring diagram to see if there is a wire or relay that feeds power to all the dead lights but only those lights.

If anyone knows of a likely failure point, be it a relay, or a particular wire or plug I should suspect. I would greatly appreciate the information.


The diagrams in the service manual are a bear to follow , unless I were to go get it printed out on a 40" wide printer where it made a continuous diagram that I could easily read and highlight the areas I wanted to check as well as Mark the wires I found to be good.

Anyhow unless someone has a good idea where to start. I guess I am gonna start by checking for continuity on related wires starting nearest the battery as the wire in question is probably burnt in two and probably only shorted to ground on one end.



Solutions, suggestions, and ideas are all appreciated.
I am hoping that the fact it affects all of the running lights and only the running lights, and it is between the main fuse and the steering stem fuses narrows it down to a particular wire, relay, or junction ...

 

It's not a relay problem unless the connections under the plug on top of the starter relay are burned.

 

Edit#2
M- meter testing shows that the two single lt blue, and orange wires feed whatever power the front lights get from the same colored wires of the signal light switch and can provide a ground back through the rear signal lights, slight resistance to ground on these wires show this to be the case.

Tail light doesn't come on at first only the tail light out warning light, after a second or so the tail light comes on and warning light goes off.

When testing the wires coming from the signal light switch, with input power hooked up and output power left open to test.
the lt blue and lt blue and white wires act normally.
The orange wires however do not ....the signal wire gets power as it should , but the park light wire retains 2.5 volts when the signal is switched on it should go full open reading 0 volts. This should happen regardless of the switch being loaded or not.

I think I damaged my signal light switch.....going double check the diagram and see if the 2.5 volts can come from anywhere else.







I was thinking there was possibly a relay that operated off the keyswitch that turned the lights on and off.

Strangely enough I went down to look for my multimeter, and put a fuse real blade fuse in the holder I added onto the starter relay. For the hell of it turned the key on and found that the headlight, taillight, dash lights, and even the front running lights worked
what didn't work was the rear running lights and the turn signal flasher goes crazy, unless you unhook the front running lights.

Using one of the front bulbs as a continuity tester. Dang where did that multimeter go. I was able to determine that both front signal light wires act as a ground completing the circuit for the park lights. So the rear park lights are dead (not sure but I bet it's no ground or a hot ground) and the signal light wires act as a ground.

That pretty much narrows it down to only a few choices, now if I could just figure out where I put that tester....
It usually comes down to either:
1. put it somewhere out of sight so the preschoolers wouldn't bother it.
2. I set it in plain sight, and the kids moved it.

Trick is to figure out which it was .....sounds like its going to be harder to find the tester than it is the wiring problem.

That's what I get having little ones, as I am pushing 40. Definitely don't have the 25 year old energy I had with my first kids.




Edit:

Looks like if I test the turn signal switch , turn signal relay, and tail stop sensor and related wiring, the problem will have to turn up.


Ed#2
M- meter testing shows that the two single lt blue, and orange wires feed whatever power the front lights get from the same colored wires of the signal light switch

 

Haven't had a chance to do more digging, but the more I think about it , the more questions pop up.

Is it more likely the short is in the harness?
Would I be better off to check switches, signal relay, connectors, other connected accessories first?

Does anyone know of a reasonably priced source for a new VF F harness?

Anyone have any experience with used harnesses?
I am guessing it would be easier to test a harness that was not in the bike?

I am beginning to think I should have held off and got a slightly newer bike, given I bought it "running" and it seemed like the guy was fond of the bike, but I ended up crawling home, ( my wife in our '95 BMW 325is smoked me coming off the lights) and now find that the poor vf was not properly cared for, possibly the PO simply didn't have the mechanical inclination, or means otherwise to care for it.
Very frustrating almost done and now I find electrical gremlins nipping at my heels.

Maybe I should go ahead and get the tires balanced, and find a track or otherwise closed blacktop where no Amber lights won't matter and ride see if that inspires me. Maybe seeing my progress so far will help motivate me to tackle this dreaded wiring/electrical problem.

Regards
db

 

Study the wiring diagram; i don't think there is a relay in the headlight circuit, just the hi/low switch. Possibly the short burned those switch contacts.

 

I have 2 things going on, high power draw on the signal light relay that makes it run at like 10-20 cycles per second.
Also the tail light out light comes on with the key ,but the tail light doesn't, a few seconds later the tail light come on and the dash warning light goes out.

I also have an intermittent dead short, which occurred for the second time, yesterday while I was handling the harnes. I was moving wires near the turn signal and fuel cut relays, ( near R/R which was unplugged)

I did get a new standard size millimeter, not only did my little cell phone size, pocket meter, have a poor connection in the positive lead wire (non-replaceable), but it was constantly getting lost in the shuffle.



Got this worked out. Once I got a double size schematic printed out and a meter with longer leads, I done some serious looking. Basically after verifying that the related wires, switches, relays, etc were in good shape. I looked back at the cheap lights.
I found a chaffed wire going into the stem , also found both bulbs (when tested outside the housings) had developed an internal short. The shorted bulbs are new to me .
When first tested the filaments were reading 4.3 ohms and 2.8 ohms. Now both read .5 / 2.8 ohms?

It's almost like the Insulation between the hot side of the bulb and the ground wasn't any good. To have 2 fail in the same way and so quickly tells me that nearly the whole batch of bulbs was bad.

Sometimes when you buy cheap , you buy twice. It's just the nature of the beast. At least this junk was shipped from Texas so I can actually return them.