Help - Dead instrument cluster - Fixed

Dear oh dear, when it rains it pours. As mentioned before, dropped the bike last Sunday standing still. The indicator got pushed back into the fairing, but I managed to get it back in place. Rode the bike 70km per day all week, no problem. This morning I am on my way out to go and test a KTM SMT 990 and Monster 1100 Evo (discussion for another thread), 1 minute from home the instrument cluster dies (speedo, ref counter, etc.).

Okay, searched the interweb and found out the instrument cluster and indicators run through the same fuse, and it was blown. Swap it out for a spare, turn on the ignition, blows again. So, now I need to find the fault. Any ideas or tips will be much appreciated.

UPDATE:
Well, thought I had it fixed, on my way to work this morning, same sh!t. really starting to annoy me now.

Hopefully last update:
After going through a few more fuses again today I decided to tackle this head on tonight, and found it.

Seeing that I know nothing about electrics, and the fault was intermittent anyway, I decided trial and error were the only options, so followed this cave man electrician process:
1. Look at the manual and see what things are connected to that fuse (e.g. indicators, horn, speedo, number plate light, rear light, etc.)
2. Turn on ignition and jiggle the wires around to look / listen for something...........nothing
3. Randomly pull, jiggle whatever any other electrical cables I can see...........oooohh, that was a spark, and there goes the fuse..........hmmm, I smell blood
4. Go through 2 more fuses to narrow down the area, under the tank on right hand side of the bike.
5. Turn off the lights in the garage and get the government to help look for a spark, jiggle the same wire......... and there is the spark.
6. Remove the tank
7. Aha, got ya........ Towards the front of the frame under the tank on the right hand side there is a u shaped bracket that bolts to the frame to keep wires in place. There is a big bundle of wires taped together. They did a crappy job of that, and the wires have been rubbing against the loop, and the insulation on a number of wires are warn through, and so is the plastic coating on the bracket.
8. Taped them both up for now, and will pull it apart properly over the weekend to insulate the wires individually.

Very happy with myself

Check that you have not damaged the wiring up into the fairing from the fall. Sounds like a short somewhere.

I think it's jealous because you test rode other bikes ................you could try apologizing

I know, that's what I think, temper tantrums

Find the connector for the indicator you pushed in and disconnect it. Try a new fuse then. Logically it is likely the fall has shorted that circuit. If it doesn't blow, remove the indicator and look for a short. Usually the simplest thing first!

Thanks for that, it did help. Disconnected the indicator and the fuse still blew as soon as I turned on the ignition, so I know it was not that.

Then took off all the dash and took the instrument cluster out, checked all the wires, pulled here fiddled there, turned on with instruments still disconnected, no problem. Then plugged instruments back in, turned on, all working fine.

So, not sure what I did, but it is fixed for now.

So, all back together. Will post in the for sale section the fairing I took off. Someone can have that for free. Is scratched, but otherwise perfect, may save someone some money.

See "hopefully last update" in original post

That amateur sleuth approach has paid off - it also might help some of the rest of us if we get any sort of similar problems. Well done.

You now realise that having diagnosed, isolated and fixed an electrical fault you have become the forums auto-elec expert...



Well done, usually when you let the magic smoke out of the electrical components it's very hard to get it back in.....old sparky joke

Yes, well done and you probably saved yourself quite a few bucks .