Greetings everyone! I'm a relatively new member and definitely a rookie on the wrench but I'm finding great joy in riding my 1976 R90/6 and working on it myself with mentorship from some of the greats here. I have a problem I can't seem to figure out that I'd love some help with if folks have ideas. Basically my parking light stopped working for some reason. Now let me tell you what I've done recently and since the parking lamp was last working:
1. I removed the instrument cluster and sent it off to be calibrated and have the odometer repaired. Is there some wiring connection that only allows the parking light to work with the gauge cluster attached to the wiring harness?
2. I checked the bulb already and it's good. The connections on the bulb end and main board in the headlight bucket are good too. I actually opened things up to change the headlight bulb and the parking light was working fine before I started on all these projects but it's no longer working now.
3. I cleaned the starter relay off and put a little dielectric grease on all the connections after cleaning things off.
4. Replaced the battery cables and engine wiring harness
5. Replaced the turn signal relay inside the headlight bucket
All turn signals, tail light, brake light, and headlight work great so I'm perplexed about what's going on with the parking light. It's not essential that I have one but I want the bike to work in every way possible and I'm spending a lot of time making it a really sound machine throughout so this will forever bother me if I don't fix it. As I write this, there's one thing I didn't try yet that just occurred to me...does the bike have to be in neutral for the parking lamp to work? I am pretty sure I put it in gear when I was changing out the charging system and needed to pull the rotor. It's probably still in gear...seems like a silly thing but it just occurred to me so I'm going to go try that next. Although the tail light still lights up with the ignition switched to the parking light position.
Thanks in advance for your ideas!
John
John -
All that you've done sounds in order. Some ideas...
• The parking lamp should be on a Gray/Black wire and plug into the same color on the multi-color circuit card inside the headlamp. What I can share is that I have plugged to the wrong color on the circuit board when not using a bright light to assist me. There are a lot of very similar colors on that board. So that would be what I would try first.
• That connection should be to one side of one of the two 8A fuses inside the headlamp. Those German fuses often loose connection. A test lamp clipped to any Brown terminal should light the probe when applied to either side of that fuse. If not try spinning the fuse in place.
• You say the headlamp beams work, but you could still have a ground issue. Make up a 10" long Brown 16ga wire to go from the Brown area of the circuit card (there are several spare contacts) to the back of the reflector and see if that helps. Standard American 1/4" spade connectors work on these.
(Brown is what the Germans use for Return or "ground" in this harness.)
Hope this helps.
Owning an old Airhead is easy.
Keeping an old Airhead running great is the true test.
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