Inkydators packed in. 1983 CB125TD-C.

[lefty]

So, yesterday I'm on my way to work and suddenly I have no indicators.

Thinking it may be the flasher unit that has died, I called in a local motorcycle spares shop, spent my £4.95 and fitted a new one.

They still no worky.

Okey dokey, not a problem, I got arms to signal with until I get home and have a proper look.

Finished work and on my way home keep trying the indies and see that the left ones come on and glow dimly but don't flash and the right hand ones just say "sod off, I'm on strike".

Thinking to ones self "Must be a bad earth, I'll take a look tomorrow" I carry on my merry way to my cosy little cave and put her to bed for the night. Sweet dreams darling, see you in the morrow.

So today, after taking Max for a nice (very!) long walk, I had my din-dins (thankyou dear girly friend ) and then got the bike out to take a look. No rush as I'm not back at work until next Tuesday. Flippin agency work, gonna be skint next pay day now

I removed the battery and cleaned up the terminals, also did the same with the starter solenoid. Ok, ok they probably not got owt to do with it but thought "in for a penny, in for a pound". Not as if they didn't need it mind you

I removed the earth from under the seat and gave that a good spit n polish to get it all nice and shiny so as to get a good connection. Did the same for the earth connection at the rear engine mount.

Still no flashy lights.

By this time Jayne tells me tea will be ready in about half hour so I pack up and put Miss Honda to bed, get cleaned up and eat my tea. Cheers Jayne, that was scrummy

So, I did see that at the rear end there is a common earth connection that accepts 3 wires (2 indies and rear light) then disappears into the wiring loom.

Am I right in assuming the front ones will have this common connection too?

Is it in fact a common earth? I think it will be as it is a green wire that they all plug into and it's a green earth wire underneath the seat.

I don't suppose the switch could be at fault could it

Any help appreciated

[Teflon-Mike]

Oddity of the Super-Dream wiring loom; the wiringharness has a common (green) earth wire in it, running front to back on the bike, and grounding to the chassis near the fuse & flasher.

However, not ALL devices use the loom earth, they use the chassis as earth...

And the oddity IS, that the battery earth is attached via ONE cable to the engine and chassis at the rear engine mount.

Hence very easy to get poor earths.

A single 15a bit of cable from the battery negative terminal to the loom's earth bonding point can REALLY improve electric reliability on these bikes.

NEXT UP; indies.

Fronts have single wire to bulbs, form a three way junction in the headlamp.

Rears have single wire connection to bullets coming from the loom.

They are ALL chassis earthed.

HOWEVER, in thier infinite wisdom, Honda decided to give them 'anti-vibration' mounts..... and isolated them on rubber blocks.....

SO, one wire goes to bulb, bulb earths to bulb holder, bulb holder earths to the bracket in the lamp body, that earths to the stalk, and that... OH! we have a rubber AV-Mount...... SO they put a short wire lead.... with a copper ring terminal on each end, and attached it to the STEEL bracket... with an ALUMINIUM rivet...

Yeah, great..... no one heard of metalic electro-potentials then? Or do you just NOT care?

Yup aluminium rivit, acts as a nice sacrificial anode.... and the wire FALLS OFF!

I use thin guage wire, and thread through the indy stalks and provide a possitive wired arth return for each indy, using a ring terminal on the indicator body mounting bolt, and take it back to a known loom earth... splicing in extra earth connections where I have to.

ALSO in the head-lamp..... the common earth 'node' is on the captive nut for the headlamp mounting bolt.

Very common for this to come adrift, leabing all devices up front earthing to the nut, and relying on tortiouse earth path through the bolt, into the OH NO! its on rubber AV grommets.... headlamp cage... so through the PERISHED and torn rubber of the cage feet, into the bottom steering yoke, and thence through the grease..... sigh... and bearings to the FRAME, where it MAY or may NOT make it back to the battery through that ONE strap from the engine boilt!

Yes.... try looking at your earth connections!
____________________
My Webby'Tef's-tQ, loads of stuff about my bikes, my Land-Rovers, and the stuff I do with them!
Current Bikes:'Honda VF1000F' ;'CB750F2N' ;'CB125TD ( 6 3 of em!)'; 'Montesa Cota 248'. Learner FAQ's:= 'U want to Ride a Motorbike! Where Do U start?'

[lefty]

Well, it looks like I'm gonna be busy with the wiring then.

Cheers Mike, as always another very informative post.

[lefty]

Didn't manage to get much done today as Max decided to pull really hard when he spotted a pheasant hiding in the grass at the side of the path whilst on his walkies this morning. This resulted in a twisted ankle and setting me off with back ache.

I decided to take a look to see what would be needed if I have to replace or repair the wiring.

Checked out the wiring at the rear and as you can see it needs tidying because it has been bodged with a totally unnecessary piece of orange wire. The wire that it is connected to is plenty long enough to join up where the orange wire is so I can't imagine why it's there.

https://i357.photobucket.com/albums/oo17/staffyman2003/Honda%20CB125TDC/DSCF1959.jpg

Removed the headlight shell and didn't like what I saw.

https://i357.photobucket.com/albums/oo17/staffyman2003/Honda%20CB125TDC/DSCF1957.jpg

Don't like the look of that.

Upon closer inspection, it was evident that somebody has already mucked about with the wiring as there is electrical tape (only just and badly) covering (poorly) soldered wires.

Also, as can be seen by those eagle eyed ones amongst us, the indicators are non-genuine and have crimped on connectors. The earth connection for these was to the indicator mounting bolts.

I'm thinking of running the earth wires for the front indicators to a common earth connection and running it the full length of the bike attaching it to the battery negative then to the underseat frame connection and then continuing on to the rear indicators.

I'm off to my local Maplins tomorrow to see what I can pick up in order to do this although I may need to go to Halfords instead as they have 17A green wire in 4m coils but I couldn't find anything suitable on the Maplins website. We'll see what happens when I get there.

One thing I did find today was a 'spare' wire under the seat.

https://i357.photobucket.com/albums/oo17/staffyman2003/Honda%20CB125TDC/DSCF1958.jpg

The only reference to this wire I am able to find is on the wiring diagram in the Haynes manual. If it is indeed the wire, then it doesn't show being connected to anything and is therefore 'spare'. Can anyone confirm this

And here is Max 'supervising' me whilst I was getting my hands mucky.

https://i357.photobucket.com/albums/oo17/staffyman2003/Honda%20CB125TDC/DSCF1962.jpg

[Teflon-Mike]

Yes, spare wire is indeed 'spare'

Gawd knows whats going n with wired heading into cubby compartment.

Tail lamps are rather notoriouse for poor earth. Bulb holder corrodes. Earth connection is made by a tang to the metal ring in the plastic moulding... that tank corrodes.... lucar blade on the ring in the moulding... you guessed it... corrodes...

I have now drilled through about three superdream tail light mouldings and soldered an M4 stud straight through the plastic moulding to the bulb holder, after taking out the contacts and wires and sanding insessantly.... then put a ring terminal and earth wire back to common union....

I am CURRENTLY pondering chucking the ruddy things away ALL TOGETHER, and making up a piece of perspex covered in LED's to go behind the lense!

So, you MAY like to think about getting electrically 'creative'.

Earth strap? Well there is already an earth return in the loom, so may be a bit of added redundancy to take a new external earth all the way front to back.

Use spare connection in loom; make up short length of high-amp, ring terminal one end, to go on battery -ve, and a male spade to go into spare earth wire the other.

In the head-lamp shell, make up a Y piece with two Jap-Bullets, for direct earth from front indies, and splice that into the green common earth wire from the loom.

Make sure that earth bonding point on headlamp bolt's nut IS connected to the loom earth.

At rear, There is an earth wire for the tail-lamp, going to loom earth. Spice another Y piece to that to take direct earth to rear indies.

If you are messing; I reccomend an Solid-State replacement flasher, for 'LED Indicators.

I've used this one: "2 Pin LED Flasher Relay Unit - Fix Indicator Flash Rate" from Aceparts on e-bay, about £9 delivered, a few times.

You need to snip wires to match connectors either on flasher or loom. Flasher is Jap-Bullet, loom is lucar.

BUT, sealed it dont fill wiv water! And its Chyrystal timed, so it doesn't have any 'warm-up' delay, like an electro-mech unit, before indies start blinking after turning switchg on!

Rated to 10A, its MORE than enough to take the 'load' of tungsten bulbs, and if you fit LED bulbs, or even MIX tungsten and LED's it stays at constant flash-rate as chyrstal timing is not load dependant, so you dont need to worry about balast resistors or anything.

Have blown a couple, de-bugging wioring, they dont like being shorted the wrong way round!... so now they get strung with a 5A protection fuse.

Other 'mod' the tell-tale lamp in the dash is a clever bit of low rent electrics.

Tungsten bulb; two terminals; one is connected to possitive of Left Indies, other to possitive of Right indies.

When Left indies flash, current flows left to right and tell-tale earths through the right indicators, voltage drop accross bulb meaning current not enough to make them light.

When right indie flash, visa versa, flows right to left earthing through right indy.

IF you fit low wat LED's.... then you can end up with enough volts going throgh the tell tale for the indy switch to become a hazard switch!

If you have poor earths anywhere, all manner of crap can happen!

I make up a Y-Piece with two 3A Diodes, and put that on the orange feed to the tell tale bulb, connecting to both orange and blue of the indy feeds left and right, then take blue tell talke feed to earth.

NOW current flows through Y piece from either indy circuit and goes left to right through tell tale to its OWN earth regardless.

Diodes prevent volts from Left indies illuminating right, or vica versa.

You can then use LED or tungestens, in any combination, throughout the system, and you get reliable tell-tale, no cross-talk, and if you use chrystal flasher, garanteed flash timing.

I see Max.... I better not let Bear see him!

What is it about Dog-People.... we buy old DOG bikes too!
____________________
My Webby'Tef's-tQ, loads of stuff about my bikes, my Land-Rovers, and the stuff I do with them!
Current Bikes:'Honda VF1000F' ;'CB750F2N' ;'CB125TD ( 6 3 of em!)'; 'Montesa Cota 248'. Learner FAQ's:= 'U want to Ride a Motorbike! Where Do U start?'

[lefty]

Followed your advice and made up the 'extra' earth from battery to the spare connection. Must have got it right cos she aint gone up in smoke

Made a common earth connection for the indies and plugged it into the existing loom earthing wire(s). Did this at both ends of the bike.

Made sure that the earth bond on the headlight nut is present and making a firm connection.

And still no indicators

Today I've had the left hand switch gear off the bike and in the front room (sorry love ), opened it up to find the little row of terminals to be corroded. Some very fine sandpaper cleaned them up lovely so did the same to the little 'bracket' thingy that sits over the terminals to make the connections. (Anyone who has seen the inside of these switches will know what I'm on about.)

Next I installed the switchgear back on the handlebars and set to connecting back up the 14,000,000,000,000,000,000 wires in the headlight shell.

Fingers crossed.

OH, FER FUSS SAKES!

Still no indies, sod it I'm going in to have a cuppa and a bite to eat in order to calm back down.

Suitably refreshed (and calmer) I went back out to the shed and got out my shiny new multimeter.

I can find no current coming into the headlamp shell on anything. WTF

Oops, try again after taking keys from pocket and putting them in the ignition switch.

Still no reading on the indies. But reading on every other circuit in there and every circuit works.

Except for the indies.

Open up the switchgear again.

Now this is interesting. On the live feed INTO the switch there is power. Tested by putting one 'pointy thing' to the wire and then the other 'pointy thing' to earth and getting a reading of 11.44V.

When I put the 'pointy things' on the live feed in and to either of the live feeds out, I again get a reading of 11.44V.

Hovever, when I operate the indicator switch there is no such reading (0.00V) on either of the feeds out.

Am I correct in assuming that this indicates (no pun intended) that the switch is FUBAR

[Teflon-Mike]

From memory, there is a sliding plastic block, a hole two slots in it.
Middle hole has spring & ball detent plunger, slots at ends accept the 'tangs' for the brass contactor.
Contactor plate is suposed to have some 'play' in the slot. towards and away from the block.
Spring in the middle hole, pushes against contact, and the ball, so in the switch housing its holding contact against terminals AND the ball in its detent slot in housing.
Lever arm of switch, sits in 'slot' in the slider block, when switch assembly fitted into switch casiung, AND the switch lever screwed in.

1/ IS the switch arm screwed in properly, AND engaging in the slider slot so that the slider IS actually moving when you move the switch?

You may have to bend the lever slightly to get it to engage properly. The pivot may need some messing with and the RIGHT screw in it or the lever can ride up and twist rather than move slider.

2/ If switch IS moving slider.... Are the contacts ACTUALLY touching the terminals?

You may have to mess with the contact plate to make sure it CAN move up and down in the slider block, patiung attension to the bent tanks on the ends that go through the block.

You may also have to pay attension to the spring and the ball to make sure they are actually putting tension on teh contact....

3/ Switch housing... the front is a fibre board held in the metal cage with tangs, with the contacts in it.

The fibre board, can become loose, and you have to take it out to get teh slider block out anyway, so even looser when you put it back in, and this can mean the contact slides over the terminals without making contact.

Again, question pf fiddling and packing.

Short answer is switch needn't be utterly fubared... it just dont work, and its such a robust 'old fasioned' bit of kit, it IS fiddle-able...
____________________
My Webby'Tef's-tQ, loads of stuff about my bikes, my Land-Rovers, and the stuff I do with them!
Current Bikes:'Honda VF1000F' ;'CB750F2N' ;'CB125TD ( 6 3 of em!)'; 'Montesa Cota 248'. Learner FAQ's:= 'U want to Ride a Motorbike! Where Do U start?'

[lefty]

[lefty]

Teflon Mike, you da man!

I got home from work this afternoon and decided to rip the indicator switch apart again. I pulled out the little folded brass strip that sits over the terminals and gave it a squeeze before sitting it back in position.

Success

I now have working indicators again.

A million kudos to you Mike.