what did you wrench on today??

[Shin-Ken 1074]

Nice group effort in tracking down the problem.
Any thoughts on what would have caused this "ground" to go bad?

Hi Steve, two contributing factors for the bad earth.

1) A build up of road grime, dust and rust over many years under the reg/rec earth point. Yes, regular cleaning of the earth point would be the way to go.

2) Suzuki using the electrical panel as the earth point for the reg/rec. The panel is mounted on rubber grommets with only the M6 bolt threads making contact with the captive frame nuts, not much contact area as well as being a good grime trap.

By installing an additional earth wire from the electrical panel to the frame it provides a solid contact point and a good quality circuit, earth problem solved and now the reg/rec is working like it should.

[oldGSfan]

I worked on 3 bikes today, firstly the '83 GS1100E had two issues with the flashers - the turn signal control unit was not supplying ground, and the original 3-pin flashers I had were both toast. Two problems can make troubleshooting tricky, but most of my job in avionics has been fairly complex troubleshooting, so it wasn't too difficult. I bypassed the TSCU with a jumper and put in a new relay. 2nd up was the '66 Norton N15CS; the front brake lever was getting progressively farther away as it heated up during a ride, so I bled it. 3rd was the '03 KTM 450 EXC. I got an LED headlight/fairing combo to replace the AC-powered, cracked-lens original. and decided to do the wiring behind it correctly. The PO did a good wiring job, but there was no diagram for his mods. I installed new switches to fix the inoperative turn signal switchgear. Now it has an on/off/kill starter switch on the right, and turn/horn/lights on left, i.e. normal setup. Plus a sort of hidden master power instead of a key. I decided to make a diagram (work in progress still, using Google Draw) to help out in the future, no matter the owner.