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[Thunderchild]

Hi Norm. My switchgear is the 'Minda' type, so yes it is the older type and can be temperamental! I've dis-assembled the LH switchgear and verified the colours with my diagram. Connection 8 is definitely the power feed to the 'hi' and 'lo' switch from connection 5 on the 'off', 'pilot' and 'on' side of the switchgear. Connection 6 is the violet wire (earth?) for the horn. I'm considering substituting the yellow/red wire (from the a/c regulator) for the yellow wire (from the alternator) for the feed to the headlight. Can you advise on the best setup for the relay please? I've got a 12v, 15A 4 pole relay kicking about but not sure exactly where to splice it in. Cheers, Andy

[Norm]

Sorry Andy you are right, bit hard to read the numbers in my drawing, violet is 6. The yellow/red 5 which is power in to the switch from the old A/C reg or the new power supply, it shouldn't make any differance how the power is supplied to 5. 5 should then switch to 8 which is headlight power on. Sure you can use the yellow (old alt wire) as a supply to the switch if it will work. I'm not sure it would work but I would be interested to know if it does. As for the relay, what you have is fine. Firstly you need to establish how it works. Use a piece of wire with a spade bit on it and put it on one of the pins on the relay, put this on the positive of the battery and touch the other pins of the relay to the negative of the battery. One of those pins will give you a slight "click" of the relay. Mark these pins because these are the relay switch wires. To one of these pins you connect to earth on the frame, the other you connect to the rear brake red/white wire. Turn the ignition switch on and you should feel the relay "click", the switch is now working, all you then need to do is connect fron the battery positive to one of the other pair of pins on the relay through a fuse and the other pin connects to the yellow/red or yellow wire, whichever you decide to use

[Thunderchild]

Thanks again Norm. I scribbled out the connections of the switchgear last night and can't see how the headlight could possibly switch off: connection 5 (yellow/red) powers connection 8 (blue); connection 8 is used to power the HI/LO side of the switch, and the HI/LO switch metal 'slider' can only stop at positions that always receive power via connection 8 from the yellow/red wire. Even when the switchgear is set to the 'off' position, the yellow/red wire will be providing power to the other side of the switch and lighting the headlight. I assume this has something to do with how the a/c power was delivered? If I reverse the yellow and yellow/red connections in the nacelle coupler (so yellow/red goes to yellow and vice versa) I get the desired effect as the power entering the switchgear is now on connection 4 (yellow) and will not power the other side of the switch until the metal 'slider' shorts connection 4 and 5 together. Also, when I take the feed to the nacelle via the relay, how will I add the ammeter into the circuit? Thanks, Andy.

[Norm]

Hi Andy, glad that is sorted but now can you try this, re-connect the wires back the correct way in the nacelle and put power into the yellow wire that came from the alternator. If this works that is where the relay would be fitted.This doesn't run your headlight through the ammeter. If you wanted to do that you would have to connect to the red wire from the ammeter to the yellow wire into the headlight switch. Doing this means you don't need a relay but it does mean cutting and soldering wires up in the nacelle. I think that will work

[Thunderchild]

Hi Norm. The YELLOW wire from the alternator does indeed work as a feed to the headlight direct from the battery. I've now successfully set up the relay using the yellow wire and the brake light switch. Unfortunately I've introduced further wire colours to my rainbow coloured loom as I only had blue wire available. How can I now add the ammeter to this circuit to measure the current load? Can I take a feed from the HL yellow wire to the ammeter pos (RED/YELLOW) as this is where the other load accessories are terminated? Thanks, Andy.

[Norm]

Hi Andy, just connecting to the ammeter wont work because you are still supplying power through the yellow/relay wire. The only way you would get a reading is to disconect the relay, and wire the yellow to the switch to the neg side(should be red wire)of the ammeter. This then pulls all the power through the ammeter. I originally decided against this idea to do a simple mod to the wiring in one spot under the seat and it was mostly for the later models using the later switchgear, but at least we now have a bit more info if anybody else wants to do this. I never take much notice of the ammeters anyway because most don't give you much of an indication, usually the first indication most people get is the bike starts playing up because the battery is flat

[Thunderchild]

Hi Norm. I decided to remove the relay and fed the redundant yellow wire direct from the boyer output. This minimises the amount of fiddling and puts the ammeter into the circuit. The d/c driven headlight will be a godsend in the darker months. Thanks again for all your input Norm and hopefully this information will prove useful to someone wishing to perform the same modification. Thanks, Andy.

[Norm]

Hi Andy, so you have connected the yellow to the yellow/red from the powerbox and it workd the ammeter? interesting because that feed is before the ammeter, but if it works that is great, well done, I'll add that to my notes

[Thunderchild]

Hi Norm. Yes, it surprised me too as I had previously removed the relay and connected the yellow wire in the nacelle to the ammeter neg (red). The headlight worked but there was negligible negative swing on the ammeter. However, moving the yellow to the boyer output produced a much larger negative swing, just less than that of the headlight flash being pushed. I'm not sure why it works, but it does. thanks, Andy.