Signals acting up

Message

doubleds69 · Sat Jul 08, 2006 11:52 am

Hey guys, another newbie question for ya (I'm learning slowly but surely):

I went to wash my bike a while ago (1986 Kawasaki Ninja 600R) at a wand wash place (don't worry, I kept the spray away from bearings and such), and immediately after the signals wouldn't blink. Indicators, front and rear, left and right, would all come on, but not blink.

The next day I checked again to see if drying would change anything but it didn't. A week or so later after getting back from a trip I checked again and now all of the above don't turn on at all.

Any suggestions? I looked at the wiring diagram and it looks like the turn signal relay is the most likely culprit, but I'm not too sure what I'm looking for and what I might be able to do.

Vague question I know, but you never know, maybe someone's run into this before. Any help is appreciated as usual, thanks a lot!

#2 Unread post by **Sev** » Sat Jul 08, 2006 12:03 pm

Uhh, need a little more detail, do both the front and back come on, and stay on? Or just one of the two? And it's on both sides right?

I know that the bikes are setup to have a solid turn signal if one of the bulbs burnt out on that side. So if your back right bulb burnt out, the front right will display as a solid light.

doubleds69 · Sat Jul 08, 2006 12:24 pm

Yup, all four lights (and both indicators in the instrument cluster) just come on and stay on. Also I recently replaced a front bulb that had burned out, and that just causes the affected light not to work.

But yeah at the moment they don't even come on solid for some reason, so I'm suspecting a further progression of the same problem since I haven't done anything else with it.

I hope tomorrow I get a chance to take off the fairings and poke around. I'm hoping the turn signal relay stands out like a sore thumb and has a switch I can set from "not work" to "work" or something.

Thanks for the quick reply, maybe that gives you more to work with.

Stratus311 · Mon Jul 10, 2006 12:31 am

It seems to me that it might have been a stuck flasher and it later took out the flasher relay. Not really sure to be honest. Hope you get it fixed though.

doubleds69 · Mon Jul 10, 2006 3:27 am

Well I'll poke around there once more and if I can't figure it out I'll take it in somewhere. I want to learn this maintenance stuff but not so much that I'm willing to stay off my bike forever!

Thanks for the input!

doubleds69 · Fri Jul 28, 2006 10:38 am

Well I got 'er fixed and it just occurred to me to post what worked in case anyone else was having the same problem.

It was indeed the turn signal relay causing the problem, a new one got it working again. The tricky part at first was finding the thing as I couldn't find any diagrams that indicated roughly where it was.

On my bike at least it's under the gas tank just behind the steering head. I was able to wriggle my fingers in there and unhook the thing since I haven't yet worked up to taking the tank off (give me time, I'll be there soon enough).

So I don't know if this will help anyone else - I don't know if this is the common place for the relay or just on the ZX600A, but maybe I can at least help out somebody with the exact same bike! Anyway, thanks for the help guys!