Neutral & battery light flickering

Irish_in_Cambs · Dec 2, 2016

Hi all,

I am hoping you might be able to steer me in the right direction for diagnosing a fault I have on my '02 R1150GS. Whilst in neutral the neutral bulb lights up but not very brightly and flickers slightly. At the same time the battery symbol appears to flicker slightly? Has anyone experienced this before?

My thoughts are that it is shorting to ground somewhere in the neutral switch circuit or in the display itself but there are quite a lot of places that this could be occurring so looking for advice on where to start. Don't want to wait for the circuit to fail and maybe the bike will refuse to start up without the clutch switch in.

Thanks in advance for any help.

DrFarkoff · Dec 2, 2016

The instrument loom from around the headstock to the clocks has common earth points which are crimped with brass "thing" the corrode at these points and you get the earth via other lights

Strip off the loom tape and you probably will find verdigris at a junction

Clean it all back and solder and re wrap it

Should be a cure

squibb34 · Dec 2, 2016

DrFarkoff said:
The instrument loom from around the headstock to the clocks has common earth points which are crimped with brass "thing" the corrode at these points and you get the earth via other lights

Strip off the loom tape and you probably will find verdigris at a junction

Clean it all back and solder and re wrap it

Should be a cure

Agreed - you often see this syndrome when following cars/vans too; a strange glow from indicators/lights when they touch the brakes.

I have suffered this with several bikes, in particular I remeber a 1999 VFR800 Gen 5. They have a spider affair on the LHS that handles all the earth/neg connections around the bike. As well as clean up all the connections, we decided to run a fresh earth/neg wire up from the frame to the instrument panel & back to the ECU to make sure we had resolved the issue for good. no quick connectors that could deteriorate with time. Maybe a bit belt & braces, but the problem was sorted for good.

Ian J Hartley · Dec 2, 2016

DrFarkoff said:
The instrument loom from around the headstock to the clocks has common earth points which are crimped with brass "thing" the corrode at these points and you get the earth via other lights

Strip off the loom tape and you probably will find verdigris at a junction

Clean it all back and solder and re wrap it

Should be a cure

Not quite, but close.

Both of these two warning lights get their earths from seperate places, so it won't be the earth crimp in the instrument loom, that's just for the instrument lights.

I would be looking for the power to both of these lights, which again is a crimp in the same loom.

Ian

Irish_in_Cambs · Dec 3, 2016

Thanks for the advice. Unfortunately I came off the bike last night... then got run over! Fortunately bike and myself came off not too bad just a very sore arse.

Will have a look at the instrument loom tomorrow and see if that cures it. Cheers

robc · Dec 5, 2016

Bad luck fella. Sounds like you'll mend quickly though.

I had the flickering lights issue a few weeks ago. Turned out to be loose connection on one of the battery terminals.

Regards

Rob C

Steptoe · Dec 5, 2016

Ian J Hartley said:
Not quite, but close.

Both of these two warning lights get their earths from seperate places, so it won't be the earth crimp in the instrument loom, that's just for the instrument lights.

Spot on.

First sign of corrosion on that particularly well known earth point is problematic indicator lights in the instrument panel.

Neutral & battery light flickering

Irish_in_Cambs

Registered user

DrFarkoff

Grumpy Ole Git!!!

squibb34

Well-known member

Ian J Hartley

Well-known member

Irish_in_Cambs

Registered user

robc

Registered user

Steptoe

What a waste.

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