LED signal issues

I skimmed through the search and couldn’t find an example of what I’m dealing with. I have an 83 Maxim 550k that I lost power to my rear signals on. It doesn’t seem to get power to the instrument cluster either. I have LEDs in the front signals, LED tail/brake/ stop and rear signals. I installed a CF13 relay and tried and LED EP34 & 35 , new fuses, I tried an LED in the instrument cluster, my battery is good and charged, and I tried a metric diode between the signals and the instrument light. Nothing seems to get power to the rears. I also can’t seem to get enough power to set up a secondary set of mini signals at the front.


Any ideas?

 

do you have a wiring diagram?
what kind of fuses are you using? if oem glass replace the box with inline blade fuse box or individual inline fuses blade style
if you have power to front lights?

cluster lights are powered from main fuse via the ignition switch.
I would start here
Clean and lube the ignition switch

battery supplies main fuse which supplies ignition switch . when turned on it supplies the remaining fuses.
dirty or faulty connections will cause low voltagh/amp to lights.
is bike running when you do this?

clean all connectors

 

ATM fuses in a bus, but I removed the bus and directly wired them inline to remove any issues it may have been causing.
I’ll post a pic of my diagrams in a minute.

My turn signals only operate when the engine is on (headlight too obv) but the tail and brake lights can operate in acc position. My secondary front signals aren’t getting enough power nor are my rears. Even when splicing them into my front ones.

I’m going to review that cleaning of the ignition switch before I post my wiring diagrams.

 

Weirdnesss. That is exctly the opposite problem from what you should be having.
You might pull the seat off and doble check that the pigtails for the rear signals are still connected to the main harness, and that the connections are free of corrosion.

What happens if you replace the LED's in the rear signals with the incandascent bulbs?

 

here is a wiring dia. for signals it is a very simple circuit.


you can see how the indicator light grounds through oppisite bulb.

remove your indicator bulb to take it out of the problem. you do not need it to make circuit work
unplug the circuit canceller you cant use it with led with out some mods.
the bulbs share a connection in the main harness

make sure your using correct colors at the front and rear Dark Green and Chocklet not brown

for blinkers to work voltage goes to flasher (power side) then wire feeds to control (load side of relay)
control switches from left to right side bulbs
key off
do a continuity test from rear dark green wire connector to front connector
same with the chocklet wire.

test the ground continuity from connector to battery .

key on
you can check for voltage at connectors front and rear

 

metric diode install is cutting the 2 wires to indicator. wiring in 2 leads from diode and the single lead to the bulb then other from bulb to ground

 

This is what I’m working from.

 

I tried the diode that way, one lead to chocolate, one to DG off the indicator set up, ground to ground at the lights and nothing.

gonna check with key on continuity from front to back. I think I did it the other day and the right side rear had nothing but makes no sense to me.

 

Notice I edited the post

 

The 550h diagram is the one you want

My drawing is an edited seca diagram it shows how the indicator connects in a maxim.

In your 550h dia. You would cut the main harness side to add metric diode

 

Metric diode needs to connect to bolb first then bulb to ground. One wire to bulb gets diode other wire from bulb to ground

 

So you’re saying to run the diode in full loop (let’s say using Chocolate to Green) at the bulb and then run the ground to ground? I’m still not getting power to the bulb, but I’ll try that wiring again.

Is there a way to just skip the main connection and splice somewhere to get my bike legal and on the road again?

 

I checked the pigtails the other day and I was getting nothing on the left, 7V on the right. I even replaced the connectors and just ran them soldered. I’m gonna check for voltage in a few.

Yeah me and the electrical pixies aren’t friends. I went for a physical recently and the EKG and heart rate monitor machines went berserk on me. The doc asked me if there was some sort of voodoo on me.

 

Even that 7 volts is really low.
I saw that you have an ATM fuseblock on a common ground buss (is that correct?). Without making an entirely new wiring harness that fuse block will not work. The orignal wiring requires fuses to be inline on the hot side of the circuits.


Like this:


Not like this:


Which do you have installed?

 

7 volts is this with bike running?
if not what is battery voltage?

this link shows all photos
Metric Bike Diode Kit | Super Bright LEDs

this is final setup for led lights
cut the dark green wire and chocklet wire in main harness connector to cluster.

connect the pair of wires from metric diode to the main wires 1 lead to each wire . then the single lead end goes to wire in connector and the other connector wire is run to ground.

 

Fuseblock, sorry not buss. But I pulled them and put them in line to avoid problems and rule out the block. It’s the bussman brand one.

Thats how I wired it and nothing man. 7v running. Battery is at like 14.9 running.

 

I’m going to highlight the way I ran my wires on a schematic in a bit. I gotta run out and get color pencils or something.

 

Bottom notes read (DRL) and Secondary Signals Spliced off each signal. As in Red to chocolate, white to ground. Red to DG, white to Ground. Included is a pic of the diode how I pigtailed it in.

 

If the indicator light is not working with that setup pull out the bulb rotated 180°
The LED is a diode. There are some bidirectional lights but most people aren't buying them.

 

I tried flipping and even swapping to another of the same bulb and incandescent. Nothing.

 

Here are the crazy readings with it running that I got. Left side is switch on/right side is not

Battery: 17.69
Front turn signals: 3.5/2.5
Daytime Running Light (spoke mounted LED): 16.23
Power at main fuse: 15-18v
Rear signals- Ch side 3.3/.28
DG side 3.3/.32
Front brake signal was out now, rear worked fine.

Is it possible to boost power running a new line from the battery to the switch?

 

Anyone got any input before I try running an additional lead and go kaboom?

 

Getting the LED's signals working would be the least of my worries if these voltages are correct. I would verify the meter and if confident look at replacing the voltage regulator or finding out why it is not regulating the AC Generator output.

 

As far as I can tell the meter is accurate but I’ll retake my battery reading. I know it’s at like 13.9 when off. I figured 17 was high, but my idle is pretty high. I don’t know what limit it’s supposed to be at.

 

The regulator should maintain a maximum output of 14.5 +/-.3 volts with a fully charged battery, so yes up near 18 is a problem.

 

Awesome. It read near 19 today, DC. So how do I resolve this? Is it just an alternator or just a rectifier problem? Could it be my battery? I haven’t replaced it yet.

 

The regulator is the most likely fault, but make sure the wiring associated with it is in good condition with no corroded or pushed terminals.

 

I’m looking at getting a new Reg/Rec, could you walk me through the testing of it and how to get voltage up to my rear signals/ why only my headlight is coming in right.

 

Swapped all lights to LED including all indicators, new regulator in. Battery now reads 17v. Still not enough going to rear signals.

 

is the 17 volts with key off and bike not running?

 

Last I checked yes. But I’m going to check it again after work before I start up the bike and see. I need to pickup a second multimeter to try and trouble shoot according to the manual.

 

And so the riddle continues. Replaced my 9v battery in the multimeter, tested the dead battery 1.9v, tested the second new battery 9.7V (both Duracell). Then tested the battery on my bike. Here’s what I found:
Key off: 12.7
Acc Mode (electrical on): 12.49
Engine on apron 2k with choke on: 12.58
Voltage drop when starting: 10.8

So now I’m stuck thinking it must be my stator or alternator. The manual says this bike is due for both to be changed, and I’m about ready to just give in to both given my weirdness going on.

Only front flashers working, and last I checked they weren’t even reading at 12v but I’ll get a more accurate number later today now that I know my meter isn’t on the fritz and it was likely just some anomaly.

 

low voltage first thing to check is brushes, condition and length and copper rings on rotor

 

So the three white wires from the alternator are all consistent with each other. But I did have to use the Kohm setting to test it, don’t think that’s right but maybe it is. It came in at 7.5kohm.

I read the red/brown two wire harness which on mine is red and green braided wire. It came in at 110ohm.

still haven’t figured out the issue with the turn signals. Everything is converted to LED and still with a diode and soldered in, the turn signal indicator is off. I even cleaned with contact cleaner and then lubed with silicone spray the turn whole left hand control unit. No loose solder joints, and my front main turn signals still work.

Those only run with the spliced in lead from the headlight low beam running to the red lead on my fork indicators (day time running light), the turn signals are wired (yellow) to the respective chocolate/green connector. And the ground I’m using a lead off the bullet double connector on the original harness.

Swapped the battery, rectifier, CF13 LED adjustable flasher and all the lights etc. cleaned the contacts and it’s still coming in at 12.49 v sitting, 12.8 running. The turn signals are only getting 7V. I used a second multimeter and it came in a whole digit less (11 flat) but it read all the batteries like that and all three I have came in at 12.8 fresh off the charger.

 

7.5 kohm is way too high. It would be odd that all three indicate that so possible operator error or testing equipment. Be sure you are measuring the wires that go directly to the AC Generator and not the regulator.

110 ohms is also too high. Do as was suggested and check the brushes / clean copper rings.

I can't really follow what is said about the turn signals. If you have low voltage it should be a simple process to check input / output of switches / relays to isolate the problem. As for the indicator you mention one diode and you should have two, so not sure what the full story is there.

 

Getting on that tomorrow. In the mean time, is it possible that the bike might have had one of the fuse leads mixed up causing the voltage situation? IIRC the original bulbs are 8v and they were pretty dim when I first got the bike.

 

Two diodes? It said to connect one. The picture was a mock up before I soldered it in. I connected to the ground off the speedo led, which of course like all my other indicator LEDs is functional.