Instruments half dark at night

[Tenebras]

I fear that I may have some kind of a loose connection or fuse, but I haven't checked yet. On account of it being dark here. Anyway, I noticed tonight, as the sun was going down, that while the spedometer was lit up, the engine temp gauge and the tach were dark. I checked this tonight after it was well and truly night and there definately isn't any illumination on the latter guages.

I haven't poked around to try to find loose wires or anything, because it's nighttime now and eI couldn't see anything but I thought tomorrow afternoon I might burn some time trying to work it out. For the record, the bike is an 84 V30 with about 13K miles on. I don't have the manual so I'm not sure exactly where the fuses would be. I hope it's just a loose connection or something, because the electrical system is where the gremlins live. Anyhow, I guess I'm fishing for advice.

Tenebras

[Greg Cothern]

My guess it is the light bulb.

[Tenebras]

You know, I got a bit paranoid last night and completely forgot that lightbulbs can fail. Fingers crossed.

[Greg Cothern]

Someone will hopefully have the V-30 service manual in PDF or such and can send ya a page or two concerning the instrument cluster.

[kdf9511]

http://thepit.shacknet.nu/honda/ has the V30 manual Greg is talking about for download.

[Greg Cothern]

Thanks Kerry, knew someone had it!

[Tenebras]

Thanks for the link. I tried searching for something similar, but my google-fu was weak. Downloading now, I'm pretty sure I have the right one.

[silveradocowboy]

If you would like the parts fiche for your V30 I can email those to you. It is 10.5Mb in size so it will have to be sent in 5 or 6 emails. Send me an email(not a pm) with your email addy and I will get it out to you.

[Tenebras]

Ok, I've got a bunch of lightbulbs ordered and they should arrive tomorrow afternoon, so the plan is to replace all the bulbs at once, under the working assumption that if some of the bulbs are burnt out, the rest can't be far behind. Does this seem reasonable to you guys, or am I setting myself up for a "fabulous one horse shay" type problem down the line? I thought it would be best to do them all at once, because the process of getting to those bulbs seems a bit involved.

Here's the plan that I've gathered from my handy Clymer's book (it's like Chilton's, but for 2 wheels. That's how I think of it):

Disconnect battery (duh)
remove headlight assembly
remove instrument panel
partially disassemble latter
replace bulbs
undo everything (except replacing the bulbs, leave those as is)

That's the outline. I know that you shouldn't leave the instruments upside down for any longer than necessary (because they'll leak?). Also, I'll put this little project off for a few days if I need more and better tools than I have. I currently have assorted screwdrivers and wrenches (sockets and crescent). I think this is all I need, since the electrical connections look to be of the plug in plug out variety.

Any other tips would be appreciated.

Ben

PS, I stopped at the casino this afternoon and turned $20 into $41.50, so either I've got some luck going and this will be a breeze or I used up all my luck today and it will be a disaster. My magic infinity ball says that the  situation is unclear and I should ask again later. Stupid magic infinity ball.

[Greg Cothern]

First I would throw the magic infinity ball away LoL.  Seriously if I was going to dig into the cluster I would also want to replace ALL the bulbs so that I would not have to get back into them.

[Tenebras]

Ok, that's what I thought. Just replaced the turn signal bulbs. Now I can signal right as well as left. Once more into the breach, hopefully toward glory and an illuminated tach.

Ben

[roboto65]

The Stars at night ...................   on your dashboard lights  deep in the heart of TEXAS !!!!!!!

[Tenebras]

Ok, so the instrumentation illumination project ended, not in flames, but certainly in a whimper.

I took off the headlight assembly and learned that the wiring was redone sometime in the past by a blind spidermonkey. A hideous collection of wires awaited me behind the headlight. Not one to be daunted by mere lack of coherent thought (if you were to see my thesis you would know this already) I pressed onward. Only to discover that the crazy primate who wired this whole mess had used non-detachable clips for some important stuff.

Case in point: it is impossible to disconnect the instrument panel from the rest of the bike without using wire cutters. Oops.

So I got out a TV tray to hold the instrument panel (still attached to the bike, mind) and got back to work. Here I encountered my second and third problems.

2nd Problem: the light for the temperature gauge is inside a little metal cage which is glued onto the plastic housing. I couldn't figure out how to get the bulb out. Oops again.

3rd Problem: I couldn't figure out how to get the tach open to remove the bulbs. This was only half a problem, because it was about this point I realized that I didn't have the right size bulbs for the two in the tach, anyway. Oops, once again.

So that was my weekend adventure.

On the plus side, the OD light now comes on when I shift into overdrive. Just about gave me a heart attack when I first shifted up, getting onto the freeway, at around 60mph and I thought that something immanent was about to occur, but all in all a useful little light.

Ben

Post Script. It turns out that the only problem with the turn signal wasn't the burnt out filament. I now have an intermittantly functional right front flasher. Sometimes it works and it flashes on and off, other times it just turns off the running lights and there's no flashing. I can't seem to figure out any pattern to this behavior. I have noticed that when the flasher isn't actually working the little light in the instrument panel blinks like a gerbil on crack. When the flasher actually works it blinks like a regular gerbil. Hrm...

[roboto65]

I am think ground sound very fishy them ground wires will give you fits.....

[Curtis_Valk]

I'm with Allen, the blinker problem sounds like a bad ground.

Curtis