Hi guys, Newbie forum member with odd fault. We've just bought our son an X8R X as his first scooter. Checking things through to see if all is A-OK before handing it over to him I've come across a strange fault. In essence the twin headlight bulbs are misbehaving. Sometimes they will work just as they should, both showing high beam, then switching to low beam just fine - so I'm tempted to think the bulbs themselves are OK and visual inspection reveals nothing obvious like a burnt out filament in either bulb. Other times, one bulb will go on high beam but not low and visa versa (so for example one bulb will show low beam, then it will switch off and the other will show high beam as high beam is selected) I'm confused, both bulbs share the same feed and I cannot see any obvious reason like dirty terminals etc for a bad earth. Any thoughts?
Could possibly be corrosion on the multiplug behind the front panel. Or even worse a broken wire somewhere between the switch and the lights. THAT one's a pig to find. Go for the multiplug first, if all checks out grab a multi meter, set it on resistance, and check each wire individually, bending and twisting them to see if there is a break. Only takes one strand of wire to make a connection. First line of attack though is always clean the earth points, the terminal connections at the headlight end, with fine wet and dry paper. You'll be surprised at how little crap it takes to create a fault. Then clean the two terminals on the end of the bulbs themselves. Get white corrosion on those. Nice and shiny is what you need. For everything. Oh yeah, welcome to the best scooter site in the UK
Cheers Steve, I'll go through all you have said and see if I can find it. Testing for high resistance in the wires makes a load of sense as does going through and just cleaning up all the connectors. Right now the lights are all working like they should, but you know what is it like with these intermittent faults, it's bound to come back again on some cold damp November night when's he is on his own if I don't fix it properly.... Thanks for the welcome too
All scooters with twin headlights i've owned and i've ever dealt with are supposed to operate like that. its a safety feature. Usually the left light which is the dipped beam and the right light is the high beam. Not many scooters I know off have both lights operating together
Which leads on to my final conclusion that infact when you think they're working fine they're actually being faulty and when you think they're being faulty they're actually working correctly. Either way you still have a fault but I think you've got it the wrong way round!
Interesting! This is the first scooter I've ever had to look at, what seemed odd was that sometimes it is one for high one for low, sometimes it is both that go high then low. Hence why I guessed a fault somewhere. It seems odd to me as my husband's Honda has an identical double bulb set-up and that has both for high both for low, but then that is not a scooter. Looking at the wiring it looks like the scooter has a common feed for both high and low which splits into two, so I would of thought if high beam was on the current should flow to both bulbs.?? Both the bulbs fitted are double filament high/low beam bulbs and this seems correct for the holders and wiring loom into the headlight unit.
then your first impression is correct. Two filaments equals high and low beam to both bulbs. Get cleaning then post results please, we're suckers for a success story
In that case ignore my prediction. On THIS occasion I was wrong As steve said check and clean all connections see how you get on
W We can all be wrong I appreciate all the help and my first thought was that perhaps it was a scooter thing for one to be high and the other low only. I know plenty more already than when I started though! Been out all day on my own bike and doing a bit of spray painting before it gets dark this evening. Rain forecast for tomorrow so a good day to be indoors cleaning up connectors and checking resistances, I'll let you all know how it goes.
