KawasakiTrax Community
General Category => General Discussion => Topic started by: mswyka on March 21, 2018, 06:52:33 PM
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I had an unusual (for me) experience this evening. While starting the green sled, the headlamp and instrument lights came on as normal but then they all simultaneously dimmed to about half of what they should have been. I have not seen that before, has anyone seen anything similar to this? Sled seemed to be running fine otherwise. We are out of snow, so I didn't drive it anywhere, but I expect that the light output of the headlamp would have been insufficient to see by.
I will add that the intensity of the light did not increase with increased throttle. I will have to find some time to check voltage.
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e-start on this one?
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This sled has manual start.
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Bad voltage regulator?
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I guess I have to find some time to check voltage output and swap in another regulator. I had always thought when they went bad that voltage would go high.
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1. Bad keyswitch....B terminal (12 V AC source from lighting coil) to L terminal (to lights)not making good contact.
2. A "hot" wire is touching the chassis. Most likely the wires running under the seat to the rear light. There is a connector above the fuel pump that disconnects the taillight to see if your headlight then works properly, without having to remove seat.
3. Voltage Regulators can fail internally where the hot side touches the ground side and dims the lights. I haven't experienced this, but there were some Polaris sleds in the late '90's---early 2000's that had a bad batch of regulators that were notorious for causing dim lights. As you said, most of the time when they fail, you blow up expensive headlight bulbs. :)
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Thank you. I will check these.
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Happy Easter!
So we went out to check out the light condition, fired up the sled and the lights are were surprised to find the lights working properly. So with that, she is going away to the machine shed for a long summer's rest.
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Good evening.
Sled is out of the machine shed for a new season. When the sled starts the headlamp is bright and the Tach appears to be working. Then the tach drops and the lights dim - steady but dim.
Pulled out the volt meter and found that we only had 6 volts to the lights. Swapped in a new regulator and lo and behold 14 volts, bright lights, and a steady tach.
I would say that was about as good an outcome as there could be.
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;D
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Ooops, the headlight flickered and burned out today. \
Back to the drawing board.
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So this story had a few interesting twists. Sometimes the lights would work, and then sometimes they would be dim. Measuring the voltage when they were dim - 6 volts. So, swap in a different voltage regulator and voila - 14 volts. We have not had much snow in New York - until now - the snow outside right now is beautiful! But the last few times starting the sled the headlight blew. Tonight I measured the voltage at the headlight - 30 volts. Swapped in a new regulator - 14 volts. Oddly enough, when I looked at the regulator I took out, on one side was written neatly "bad". that one needs to be thrown out. I am now curious if there is a mechanism to test regulators other than putting them on the sled to see if the headlight blows?
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Measure the voltage before turning the headlight on.
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Measure the voltage before turning the headlight on.
Very logical. I was hoping that there might be a bench test that could be performed on the regulator. And by the way, the "bad" regulator found its way to the trash this morning.
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I'd have to dig in my electronics books from college to see if there is a way to test it out of circuit. But it's standard practice to measure the input voltage and the output voltage when in use.