[Ookie Wonderslug]

I need to hunt down an electrical gremlin in my bike. I have no brake light, no turn signals, no neutral light and no horn. All of these worked fine before I put a "new" engine in last year and haven't worked since. If I put a fuse in, it blows the instant I turn on the key. It's the third fuse from the left.



Any ideas where my short could be? Where do I start to look for this?



Could I have plugged the blinker relay in wrong?

 

[NateDawg]

It's not the relay. You have a dead short somewhere. Make sure your starter cable isnt grounding to the frame. Do you have a multi meter? Know how to use it? Unplug the 3 yellow wires connector that comes out of the motor. There shouldnt be any path to ground on each of the 3 wires. Did you connect your solenoid correctly? Is the battery reversed?

 

[Ookie Wonderslug]

Everything electrical works except for the circuit I described. It starts, charges and runs perfectly. The headlight works and the oil light and the high beam lights work too.

 

[Blindstitch]

Follow the fuse downstream as your problems should be isolated to that.

 

[decolvin]

Since you say that the problem began after you changed out the engine, the first thing I would suspect that either you connected something incorrectly during the install, or pinched a hot wire when the new engine went in. Check all the connectors that you had to unplug to remove the engine. If they are all correct, check around all parts that you had to reinstall for a piched wire.

 

[MotorcycleCommuter]

I'm not sure which of your bikes it is. But on a GL the third fuse from the left is the "horn, stop and turn". Try unplugging the horns. They could be shorted.

 

[Kenny]

There are two ways to approach this. One, you can peruse the wiring diagram to see if there might be something common to all of the items that aren't working. Two, you can pick one to trace out in painstaking detail. You seem to have a dead short. Disconnect your battery and use an ohmmeter as you follow the wires. There are several places in the wiring harness where you can disconnect bullet connectors to help isolate sections of the harness.



Here's a tip when checking resistance or voltage. Put your meter negative lead right on the battery negative even if you have to make a lead extension. Don't trust the frame or any other metal parts on the bike to be a good ground for troubleshooting purposes.



Another thing, when I had an electrical issue a couple years ago. The problem turned out to be a hidden splice connector buried in the harness under the protective rubber covering. That splice accepted one wire in and gave me two wires out. One of those output wires was broken at the splice. That one took quite awhile to track down. I'm not saying this is your problem, just saying that things can get a little strange when tracking down electrical failures.

 

[Ookie Wonderslug]

I checked and checked the wires and found nothing amiss. I eventually gave up and took it to a shop. Turns out it is the signal switch that is bad. I suspect that when I switched handlebars I might have messed something up. Lucky for me I just happened to have a spare switch. So it will be fixed tomorrow.