Triumphrat

shoggot

So I've been riding with a range rover (or rather, cheap RR knockoff) headlamp for about a month, with no worries. Sometimes, as I did with the OEM headlamp, I'd accidentally stick it into highbeam without noticing for a few miles... This becomes relevant soon.

So, leaving from a friend's house towards home, a few blocks from the highway (11PM), I hit the pass switch to get some quickie high-beam love on the pavement. Everything's fine... and then poof, no highbeam. Releasing the pass switch, no low-beam either.

Still lit was the tiny bulb below the main bulb; I've heard it called a primer bulb, lord knows why? All it told me was that something there was still getting juice, but it sure didn't illuminate anything ahead of me usefully.

I pull over, shut the bike off, turn it back on - it fires up fine, but the headlamp's still out. And oddly, so's the tach; the lights on the tach are still lit (ditto for the speedo), but the needle isn't moving. Nor are the indicator lights (temp, oil, flashers). The flashers themselves work, but I don't see it indicated, if that makes sense.

Well, as I'm miles from anywhere, I head home - in the dark - sans headlight. Slowly, with hazards on. Much of the ride home is highway...

Nearer home (after perhaps a half-hour of normal riding performance, lack of tach & headlight aside), I get off the highway. After a few blocks, the bike decides that two cylinders is better than three, and acts on this (I'm basing this on sound / feel / power to the wheel). At stops, I have to keep it revved up to not die; and I need to be revving higher than normal to start moving.

At two blocks from my house, it seems to take another step in this direction; is it even possible to run on a single cylinder? This felt like what was happening; I suddenly had to rev much higher to get moving & not die, and still ended up dying numerous times.

Through bullheadedness I got it home and parked; I pulled the seat, and went through the fuses one by one (why I didn't do this originally, I don't know; inborn stupidity? Live & learn), and the last one (if you're at the rear of the bike looking towards the bike, the far right fuse) was blown; it's a 10-amper. In the dark, I couldn't read the legend as to what it's for. I had a spare, replaced it, and started the bike - and up she fires, headlight going strong, engine realizing the joys of three cylinders firing, neutral light shining, tach needle happily jogging its way towards 3.5krpm on full choke. I switch to brights, no worries, there's the brights. I flick the pass switch, hey, there's brights again.

So what happened? And how did a fuse blowing cause a delayed-reaction cylinder-by-cylinder orderly shutdown? I'm a tad freaked out about it.

RideVT

I had the something very similar happen to my bike last year. It took forever to diagnose the problem. In the end it was the little nub on the frame where the wiring harness from the headlight comes out and works its way through the rest of the electrical system.

What had happened was over the years the original wiring sheath had dry rotted and cracked, the little nub on the frame wore through it and eventually through my headlight wire. Through lots of trial and error (and a bunch of fuses) I noticed that every time I would turn the bike to the left the headlight would go out. Once I figured that out it was just matter of time before I could triangulate on what was causing the short. After I found the problem, I clipped the wire and soldered it back together and heat shrunk around the connection. I then wound electrical tape over the harness and ground out the nub on the frame. The issue has never retuned.

You may have a similar issue only more wires have been effected. At least it is one place to look before you really start getting into an electrical nightmare. Good Luck