Hitchcocks Forum

Hello!

I have to start by explaining I am painfully new to any types of motorcycle maintenance and am endeavouring down the path of bettering my knowledge, basically you will have to excuse how painfully dense this question might be.

I am replacing the bug eyed, ugly indicators supplied with my 2002 Bullet 500 with the bullet shaped chrome, long stemmed version found in the lighting section here.

Although fitting has gone seamlessly all I have managed to get from my previously efficient indicators is a laboured buzz from the coil (I assume). What have I done wrong? All the other electrics seem fine so that's something at least.

Any help would be greatly appreciated and almost no level of patronising will be taken with offence.

Being an Old Fart who has survived into his 8th decade (as the Mad one keeps telling me) I would not reduce my margin of safety by reducing indicator size, but each to his own..... My 2 drachma

That is a funny one. Good work for trying though. I normally find with these things it's always something simple. I would disconnect all the connections, then connect one at a time to try and find where the fault is. Assuming all the indicators are wired correctly, there's no shorts and that they are 12volt (which is what I assume you have.) One last thing to ask, are you sue your battery is good? Maybe whilst fitting you left the ignition on? Lights on? Now it's flat?

It sounds from what you say that you have in fact done nothing wrong... I'm assuming you made all the connections properly. Did you connect any earths up as well as live?
My guess is that the new bulbs are of a different power and are therefore confusing the flasher unit. So check how many Watts the new ones and the old ones are and either swap them round if they will physically fit or buy some with the same power as the old ones. Or if that's not possible you may have to contact Hitchcocks again which in any case is always a pleasure and see if they will sort out new bulbs or perhaps a different flasher unit. Good luck, Chris

OOps Matt you were quick and got in there while I was slowly typing my bit... just to say I agree with you and wasn't trying to supersede what you put -C

Chris mate, the more the merrier. Cheers.

Hi Mate. As Chris had said check that the bulbs are exactly the same wattage as the old ones (10watts I think). If they are even slightly different they won't work properly. If they're not the same whattage I;d get back to Mr H. If that's all ok then check your connections again, and that every bulb is properly located in its housing. Good Luck!. Riggers.

Blimey Bryan, in your 8th decade, well I never, I didn't realise that, that means you are past your xxth birthday then. You are doing well for an oldun. Keep ridin' 'em Bryan. Stafford on Saturday? I shall be there.....the upstairs bar at 1:00pm. Oooooops sorry.....indicators not working? I would just use hand signals better than all that unreliable high tech stuffs. Mad I hear you say.....yes quite Mad.

My wife bought the same indicators for her electra X from here and we had the same problem. Multimeter sorted it out....the wiring colors were the wrong way round from the ones we took off. Putting the meter on continuity/resistance and checking each wire against the body of the indicator found the 'earth' was wrong way round. Switched the wires over and they worked ok. Just in case yours are different i'd check with a meter first before just sawpping the wires - dont want you to blow your relay.

Are we talking about LED's here, globes with 2 wires shouldn't matter which way because the body is usually insulated if they have 2 wires