I will tell you that the Yamaha Vision Gremlins are a lot more vindictive than anything associated with Progressive Insurance. It was just one day last month that I went cheap on the bike and added one tank full of Regular 87 Octane Gasoline and that really pissed off those nasty gremlins. During just that one tank of gas, my bike over heated due to the thermo switch to the radiator fan fuse blowing and the engine not cooling properly (I've previously written about it) AND the front cylinder on the V-Twin stopped working.

Those gremlins were working over time! The front cylinder simply stopped working while riding down the road. I wasn't riding hard or stressing the bike in any way. I just didn't realize that there was a gremlin on the bike with me riding 2-up.

The rear cylinder of the bike got excessively hot as the coolant in the radiator was not circulating with the front cylinder staying cold. What a mess! I limped the bike home and found the wire from the rev limiter and just snipped it. Cutting the rev limiter is a common and easy fix to the front cylinder cutting out on the Vision. Easy as pie.

Now back to your regularly scheduled daily commute.

Labels: Electrical

Is seems that the place where I mounted the switch for the auxiliary lights on the Yamaha Vision was in such a place that I could not turn them off fast enough when faced with oncoming traffic, especially with gloved hands.

I went and rewired the auxiliary lights through the High Beam switch and eliminated the separate switch all together. I studied the electrical schematic for the Yamaha Vision and found that the yellow wire running from the high beam switch on the left handle bar runs from the switch to the headlight and then back to the high beam indicator light under the speedometer. Unfortunately, the indicator light has a low voltage draw to illuminate the blue indicator lamp. I devised a simple solution...

Throw a relay into the mix and things should work great (and the relay costs less than $3.00). The four prong relay was exceptionally easy to install. One of the prongs goes to ground, one gets spliced to the yellow wire between the headlight and the blue indicator light, one prong get attached to the positive side of the battery and the last prong goes to the "hot" side of the auxiliary lighting circuit. The negative side of the auxiliary lighting circuit is already attached to a ground from the initial installation.

Let's see... Turn the ignition on, check. Start the bike, check. Switch the headlight from low beam to high beam, headlight goes to high beam and.... the auxiliary lights come on, perfectly! Total time to rewire the auxiliary lights through the headlight switch, 15 minutes. Time to go for a ride!

Labels: Electrical