Troubleshooting a PIAA Driving Light Electrical Issue

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Beau_Wiley]Beau Wiley

PROBLEM:
I need a little advice. I have the PIAA lights installed and they worked fine for a year. Now they blow the inline fuse every time I turn them on. I unmounted the PIAA lights from the highway bar and now the fuse no longer blows out. I put a voltmeter on the hanging PIAA light metal casing while they are on and the voltmeter reads 12V. Ouch, I look inside one of the PIAA lights and they are internally grounded to a screw inside the casing.

Since I can read 12V while touching the casing of the lights, does this mean their is bare metal touching the hot wire or does it mean my ground is bad?

This is happening on two separate Kingpins that have these PIAAs installed.

I checked the draw when the lights are on and not mounted to the metal highway bars. It is low. I am able to use a 15 amp fuse without it blowing. These lights suggest a 30amp, so that is good news.

If you have any tips on what is causing this, please let me know. I am guessing I have a bad ground since the wiring inside and outside the lights looks good with no exposed wires.

With both bulbs removed and the PIAA casings attached to the bike, no blown fuse. And my other set of smaller halogens driving lights stay on.

I will replace the bulbs.

SOLUTION:
I replaced the bulb and still had the short. Not one to give up I disasembled the PIAA light. Since the outside PIAA casing was still reading 12Volts I new that something internal to the light was not being grounded correctly. On one of the PIAAs I reasembled step by step, checking for the short as I went. I got the the last screw that holds on the front casing with the lense and checked. The fuse bew. Ok, the screw is contacting the internatl lighting component. The insulation must have worn out. So I put a thin piece of rubber over the hole and then reattached the bolt. This solved the problem on the left PIAA. The outside casing now read 0 volts.

The right casing was a little different. It was shorting out without even attaching the screws. So I took this apart and reassembled. This fixed the problem and the right PIAA casing now reads 0 Volts and no more shorts on the 30 Amp in-line fuse.

I think I sacrificed 50 fuses to resolve this and bought $80 replacement PIAA bulbs that I most likely did not need. Now I have some spares.

I know this situation is occurring on another Kingpin and I bet it is the same issue where the internal gorunding of the PIAA has been compromised through age.

Contributing author to the Victory Custom shop -- Cycle Solutions http://www.CycleSolutions.net

and the Victory Kingpin Cruiser Enthusiast site http://www.KingpinCruisers.net