Headlight relay mod warning bypass and high indicator pics

Okay, I can never find it when I look for it, but I stumbled onto it before. Anyway, I saw that there were two ways to bypass HEAD warning if you are running power to your lights through relays, as I am. With the original wires turning the relays on and big gauge wire powering the lights.

One way is to put a couple 20 Ohm 10 watt resistors in line with the original headlight wires. I tried this, didn't work for some reason, and I didn't like the heat the resistors create or the minor loss of wattage, really, even if it did work...

The second way is to just jump across this coil that flips some kind of reed switch on the computer's circuit board. I forgot to take a picture of the HEAD warning on LCD screen, but trust me, it was there. Then I took this picture, of the bike running, all systems go, no warning on LCD because of this jumper wire:


jumper by epochal image, on Flickr


Now, The one right next to it is high beam, you could tell if you looked at your own, because the wire going to it is yellow/green, just like every where else. I skipped bypassing that one, because I didn't really care, but you'll see in a minute that I get a warning if my high beam is on. But regardless, you can see the proof of concept, magnetic switch bypassed, no need for current through that coil, warning not showing. Next step, make it permanent(if not pretty)


permjump by epochal image, on Flickr

At this point I ran into some problems, because I screwed up. See, I took cluster off, set it on tool box, and plugged it in, mixing up one set of wiring connectors. I thought that was impossible, but there you go, so my turn signal indicators wouldn't go off at one point, and I re-did everything trying to figure it out. :roll: But when I finally stopped being stupid, I was able to fix the other issue.

See, when you do relays, it messes up your high-beam indicator. For reasons I haven't really figured out, it's wired so that when highs are on, it keeps powering the low beam really(obviously at the factory they didn't expect this mod, but it still seems weird that the high beam indicator is in any way linked to the low beams)

Here's a picture of original wiring, and how dim the bulb is and it's also useless because it lights up both filaments of my headlight, if I didn't pull the indicator bulb. I am using jumper wires here because I was testing things, but here they are connected to the green and yellow wires in the stock configuration.


indicatebroke by epochal image, on Flickr

Now, I figured the easiest thing to do would be to use the high beam wire that runs FROM the computer to the relay, NOT the yellow and green wires that run TO the instrument cluster FROM the bike. And instead of that green wire, run to a ground, for instance, the ground wire that goes with the original headlight wires. I'm not using this wire, because I gave the relays their own thicker ground wire, and it's convenient, anyway. Here is what I mean:


indicatorfix by epochal image, on Flickr

That's hard to see, but the indicator bulb is powered by the yellow/green wire and grounds to the black ground wire. That unused wire there partially stripped is the low beam, green/red wire, I stripped it by accident

Notice it's nice and bright, and there's no pic of it, but trust me, the headlight is switching from high to low correctly, and I have an indicator! And no "HEAD" warning.

Here is put together. Yes, my speedo is not correct for my bike, too bad If you got a Maxim speedo to give me(with a trip odometer) that would be great, lol. Mine bit the dust, this is a junk yard part. (Oh, and my LCD polarity is reversed, if this looks weird to anybody)


low by epochal image, on Flickr

No warning! Now this next pic is the high beam, see the blue light. You will also see that now there is a warning, haha, that's what I get for not doing the other bypass, but I was a little worried about screwing something up, and I don't mind the high beam one, just kind of a second indicator, really, since I took the warning bulb out already.

I just like to be able to get rid of all the warnings on LCD screen if I want to, and especially during the day, when I'll only have low beam on anyway.


high by epochal image, on Flickr

 

I'm a bit confused about you you mean by:
"running power to your lights through relays"
but I am interested in TRICKING the computer into thinking my LED headlight is in fact a normal higher wattage bulb.

I have a few spare atari's to experiment with and I could probably sell a speedo cheap to you (I'd have to make sure they trip knob isn't cracked or missing tiny screw first).

Another user detailed how to trick all the warnings for LED use on a SECA atari. Though, probably similar the pictures are long gone and some of us are visual people...

I have soldering gun (and the spare atari computers) to work with, so if you have additional details (ie wire number) and/or better closeup pics of the jumper wire please post them.

Eventually it would be nice to jump my Tail and Head light warning, although it really doesn't matter that much to me. I have electrical tape over the flashing warning light. LOL

 

Re: Headlight relay mod warning bypass and high indicator pi

Metal_Bob Okay, what I am talking about here is a pretty common mod to headlights. That is, and I was pretty tired when I wrote the original post, so I probably didn't explain well, where you bypass all the little wiring and the computer and whatnot by installing two relays, available at any auto parts store, and running power to the lights with them. What this means is running a thick gauge of wire(I think I used 12 or 10) straight from the battery to the two relays and from the relays to the headlight.

The relay is just a switch, so until that switch is opened the current isn't sent to the lights, but what you do is just run the original headlight wires to the relay(there are pins that are for activating the switch, they are clearly marked) so instead of your computer output wires going to the light, they go to a relay. Then they activate the relay when you turn the key on, at least on my bike, and the relay goes ahead and sends the power from the thick wire to the light. One relay for low, one for High. Look for posts by Polock, he has a good write-up with schematics.

The problem with this mod is HEAD warning and you have to pull the High beam indicator bulb, or else it activates both relays and you have high and low at the same time. I just fixed both issues, because I hate warnings and I hate all my bulbs not working

As far your LED light, if you jump across the coil I show above, it will kill your HEAD warning, at least on low beam, but you can easily jump both of them(HIGH and LOW, I mean, they are next to each other). You have to pull the circuit board out from behind the computer display, that's what I'm showing above.

The only picture you need to worry about is the one that shows a red wire going across that copper coil, where there isn't one before, that's the bypass. Normally, if there is current going through that coil, it activates a magnetic switch turning off the HEAD warning, because current going through a wire causes a magnetic field orthogonal to the path of the current(sorry for that sentence).

Long story short, you are taking that switch out of the circuit, it's clear where you need to solder the wire when you look at board, there is a green/red low beam wire going to one coil, which has one pin on each end soldered to the board, that's where you attach a jumper wire.

 

Wouldn't it be simpler just to cut the circuit board track to the warning light?

 

Oh, do you mean the specific wire in that plastic thing that goes to the display and has like twelve wire or whatever inside it? Probably, but I didn't think of any way to test that without hacking it up and if it didn't work, then I'd be trying to undo what I did.

I didn't know when I started if I needed to jump across that coil or cut the wire going to it, because I didn't know if the switch was normally open or normally closed, this way was easy to test before I did anything permanent.

 

Re: Headlight relay mod warning bypass and high indicator pi

So after bypassing the OEM wiring and jumping the magnetic reed switches in the warning indicator panel, did it make much of a difference (i.e., did you measure bulb voltages before/after)?

Metal_Bob - if the tail light warning lights operate the same way as the headlight warning lights, there should be another magnetic reed switch operated by current flowing to the tail light. Jumper it (like the headlight reed switches) as not enough current is flowing through the circuit with LEDs.

 

Well, I haven't measured the bulb voltages, I measured some of the voltages in the wires when I was playing around with it. But you are asking two things, if I understand, zap. Bypassing the computer as far as powering the headlight, that made a huge difference in brightness of the bulb(which is a Silverstar) compared to stock wiring, but I didn't measure the voltage at the light, just used eyeballs.

That little wiring and old connectors(which I have cleaned up, but you can only do so much) and that computer, and sharing a circuit with instruments, etc, just suck a lot of juice from the lights, that's why Sylvania Silverstar and then relay mod are the first two improvements to the stock light that are usually mentioned. (and clean/replace wiring)

Also it seemed to make the instrument lights brighter, as the head is not longer on that circuit, just relays and dash lights. Not a lot, but enough to make seeing them at night easier, to my subjective senses.

Jumping the reed switch is a whole other thing I just did, months after the relay mod. Seems as bright as always. I have no idea if jump affects voltage at the light. It shouldn't, the light gets power straight from the battery via relay, nothing changed there. It could conceivably affect the voltage at the relays, I guess, but not enough to matter, they are still switching.

My slight mod to the high beam indicator is the main thing that I was worried could throw off the relays, since it's taking current "before" it gets to the relay from the computer, but that little bulb doesn't seem to affect the relay performance.

And the whole thing for sure loses less watts than the other method of tricking the computer I mentioned, wiring in a 20 Ohm 10 watt resistor into the OEM headlight wire to simulate a headlight. I tried it, just heats up too much, and wastes precious wattage.