Bonneville America Forums Forums Technical Forums Accessories Light bar wiring

So when I bought my bike the dealer was cool enough to go along with this plan: 1. Remove the Triumph lightbar they had already put on because I thought the tabs on the end were cheezy and also wanted to relocate the turn signals. 2. Order the Rivco lightbar from Brent and install it.

Here's the problem: seems they wired it into the 5 amp circuit for the speedo light. I also had a tach put in and the light for that is on the same circuit. I've blown three fuses in as many weeks and I'm sure it has been out more than I know...

Should it be wired to a different circuit? Do I need a relay or something?

Thanks in advance for the advice.

Uh yeah... There is a separate lightbar connector under the tank. There's a few threads on it already. Do yourself a quick search and read the vault electrical section. Lots of info.

I had this problem with the triumph light bar. The connector under the seat also connects to the same fuse as the tach light (not sure the amperage, which is surprising given the number of fuses I bought before I found the problem), so that isn't going to solve your problem. I had a short in the light switch that came with the light bar, and once I removed that, I had no more shorting problems. I'm still draining the battery at low RMP, though, so if anyone has a sollution to that (e.g., boosting alternator output) let me know.

In your case Anders you had a dodgy switch. Sounds like Rivco are suggesting that he should draw the running current for the lights from the instrument illumination cicuit. What it needs is a relay involved with the illumination circuit running the relay, and the current draw coming from the batter.

As for your battery going flat, unless you've got something like heated grips, a GPS, etc that's gonna pull a lot of current the alternator should be able to cope with a normal load (even with driving lights). Chances are you've got something with a partial short in it that's draining it when it's off. Either that or your battery's dodgy and not holding a charge. To test for a partial short get an ammeter, remove the wire from the positive terminal of the battery and connect the ammeter between the battery terminal and the wire. If the bike's off you should see NO current (unless you have an alarm or a clock). If there's current there, start pulling fuses till it goes away to find out where it's going.