The headlight and brake light have just stopped working, there were on and then .....zip. The foot brake light works and the headlight flasher works.

Most likely a connector? but which one?

Hi Mike,
Work through the excellent wiring diagrams that Bert has done in real wire colours that will explain a lot. He has done them broken down into colour and bold emphasised circuits.
Regards,
K-BIKE

Thanks K-Bike

I was never good with technical drawings

But I will give it a go

Hi Mike,
If you look at it as power flowing from Positive + to Negative - and remember that on our bikes earth is brown (typical logical German thinking there I must say). Use the selective diagrams and work out how the power flows and it will all become clear, it's just like following a roadmap really, it's just a roadmap for electricity flow.
Regards,
K-BIKE

Thanks K-Bike Thant helps with the mapping on the wiring diagram.

Germans..... colour blind?

Hi Mike,
Glad it helped, I have the official BMW diagrams for our bikes and they are rubbish to put it mildly! They are poor and all black and white and I can remember when I first got into dialogue with Bert who had taken the trouble to do a wiring diagram in AutoCAD in colour. I got a copy and got one of our cad guys to plot it A1 in colour and it made it so much easier to read.

Now by using various sources and the official diagrams he has produced the most fantastic set of drawings with different sub-systems highlighted for different problems. Just amazing!

I have been lucky in that I have been repairing, building vehicles and electronics since I was about 10 so I find it easy but it is just practice AND having a ROAD MAP! for the wiring.

What we have on this site is an excellent set of road maps together with the troubleshooting tools the "does it do this?" Yes? or No? The answer leads one to a "now do this if it was yes" or "now do that if it was no".

It makes sorting really hard faults much simpler because many times one is working through yes no answers and then a final few actual measurements like resistance or voltage and dependant on that answer it is either a bad component or a bad connection.

Sadly repair shops usually have totally unskilled individuals who throw parts at the machine till it works and charge you for every item they use not just for the one item that was the real fault. There are of course stand-out opposites to that with hugely skilful guys like Tom Cutter of Rubber Chicken Racing and Anton Largiader of Virginia Motorrad and a few others (wish we could have those guys duplicated in every country).
There is real gold in these pages and a read of every post will be well worth your while and you know we all learn something from others and also we all can offer a useful tip or two on some item that has been puzzling another one of us for a long time.
Regards,
K-BIKE

No need of a map, it's just the right connector which is in fault. It's very common on our K's here in France. We have a kind of magic product called WD40. just spray it on the contacts and it will work!! I dont know if you can afford it in England. Otherwise i use a product called KF Kontact specially manufactured for electronics and available in electronis shops.

WD40 I have one in my garage

Thanks for the tip.

Hi K-Bike

You are so right there are so many garages where they forgot how to fix things and they just throw enough parts at the problem until one fixes it. The downside of this is that unskilled uninterested greedy people now have garages.

I had this conversation with Bert on here before. When I was growing up in the fifties my dad used to show me how to keep his car on the road and we fixed many things together. I still remember the old starting handle which I had to turn on those cold winter days when the battery had failed..........happy days.

If you have a place where they actually know what they are doing it is in deed a Gold Mine.

This forum is great and the help endless.........Kismet

And for those who understand french (Hi Bert from Chat vert on the french forum) you can go to http://bmist.forumpro.fr/index.htm
Otherwise (anf if you(re not in a hurry) i, and some people here, can translate some topics if you need it

MikeK100 wrote:WD40 I have one in my garage

Thanks for the tip.

so you just have to "do it"

Hi Guys,
Not to burst any bubbles but WD 40 is great for removing water such as inside the distributor cap of a car when one has condensation in there or from spark plug leads that have been subject to a water dousing but for improving contacts I am sorry I do not agree.

In my opinion WD 40 is a good water displacer, a poor to moderate long term protectant against corrosion and not a contact treatment to improve conductivity, whereas DeoxIT is very definitely a conductivity improver when two metal items are in contact but is an insulator when metals are separate (such as traces on a circuit board).
Regards,
K-BIKE

In fact for most of Bmist's here in France the WD40 is known as a magic product. We use it very often on connectors anywhere on the bike and for some spécial parts i use KF contact.
... but i 'm not sure that the composition of the WD40 is exactly the same for you under the Southern Cross and for us in France

Here, it is a fish oil solution. It is an excellent "general purpose" spray. My favourite use is for stopping squeaks and penetrating rusted bolts.

Yes, it's the "Jeep" of the sprays

I am getting the odd twinge o my knees.....Wd40 ?

You said it was great for dealing with squeaks and rusted bolts<

I have found that a pint of Guinness and a shot of Jack Daniels works best for me but I am willing to try anything once.

You'd be better off eating vaseline  With Jack Daniels I make more noise

For myself and a lot of guys I know
WD40 is regarded as a good general purpose ( cheap) oil spray
I tend to spray it about liberally and dont expect too much from it

For better derusting and protection I use ACF50
a bit pricey but very good
I also use it on connectors if I havent got
Electrolube or a similar contact cleaner.

BTW, We have this product called Cillit Bang! which
some eejit on the telly was ranting about and in the ad
cleaned a penny with it in seconds
Seeing it clean a penny, I thought "Hmmmm!"
and bought some out of curiosity and found it was
very good at cleaning out green, heavily oxidised connectors on a
K100 which had languished outside for some years.
After cleaning and drying I used electrolube or ACF50 to protect it

No idea what its used for about the house
something called 'housework?' I'm told
whatever that is..........

Things were going just fine......then you had to go and mention housework.

Am I correct in saying that when I leave the sanctuary of my garage and visit the other place I am supposed to do " housework" ?

I never ask my wife to clean my spanners or sort out my tool box so I think it fair that she keeps her own sanctuary in order, I do however use a bit of wd40 on the chain that is on her and the kitchen sink...well it is only fair if you have a talent you should share it with the people you love.

For my part I am a man of the millennium and I do sit with her to watch movies and I have been known to cry during the sad parts, why only the other day I was asking for the kleenex during a sad part of the movie "gone in Sixty seconds" that Fast back Mustang getting crashed and wrecked near broke my heart...sniff....sniff

Getting back to the headlight problem

It was a connection problem which has now been cleaned.

Life..........funny kind of thing really

MikeK100 wrote:Things were going just fine......then you had to go and mention housework.

Am I correct in saying that when I leave the sanctuary of my garage and visit the other place I am supposed to do " housework" ?

I never ask my wife to clean my spanners or sort out my tool box so I think it fair that she keeps her own sanctuary in order, I do however use a bit of wd40 on the chain that is on her and the kitchen sink...well it is only fair if you have a talent you should share it with the people you love.

For my part I am a man of the millennium and I do sit with her to watch movies and I have been known to cry during the sad parts, why only the other day I was asking for the kleenex during a sad part of the movie "gone in Sixty seconds" that Fast back Mustang getting crashed and wrecked near broke my heart...sniff....sniff

Well I showed your post to my wife and her reaction was: "He's exactly like you!"
It's almost true at the exception that I don't cry when I see a mustang crashing on a wall.

Good one Mike. We are sometimes too serious.

Cheers

Bert