audiomick

Yeah, I picked that up somewhere, and was very surprised. That has been their marketing pitch for so long, and it works well. And they gave it up. I can't help thinking that a German bookkeeper (Audi = Volkswagen) might have had too much to say in the decision.

Indeed it is. And this is so true: I think I got it, though, with the "flat in flatulence". "BMW: the "fff" in Furz seit 102 Jahren." Deepl.com gives this back: "BMW: the ‘fff’ in fart for 102 years." Works for me.

That's an important point. The relays don't have much clearance to the seat base. I did some looking a while back, and discovered that a lot of the available relays on the market might be a couple of millimetres too high for the available space.

Well, if you do insist on living in Gippsland.

I feel I should pull those two posts up again. If what @Weegie meant with "high beam bulb" was the high beam indicator in the dashboard, the answer is of course "Yes, it could". As I read that post, I still had the original problem as being with the low beam in my mind, as described in the opening post. After Tennigtragic swapped the green wires on the relays and the problem moved to the high beam, the high beam indicato light became part of the circuit and provided, of course, a path to earth.

I just put that through deepL.com, just for fun to see what comes out. This was translated as this and putting that back through to English, it gave me this Funnier in German, but still good in English, I reckon.

Another penny dropped a couple of hours ago, probably the last one on this topic. Initially, it was the low beam playing funny buggers, then @Tennitragic swapped the green wires on the relays. After that, it was the high beam with the peculiar behavior. As long as it was the low beam playing up, it was likely the fuel sensor providing the path back to the battery minus. In the high beam part of the wiring loom, between the high/low switch and the headlight, or the way the wiring is now the new relays, there is also a connection to earth through the high beam indicator on the dashboard. With the green wires on the relays swapped so that the high beam was playing up, both the fuel sensor and the high beam indicator provide a potential path to "earth". I'm now content to believe that there is no fault as such in the wiring, but merely "weak spots" that only showed up because of the incorrect connection of that one green wire to plus instead of minus.

Brilliant. Now I just have to figure out how to translate that appropriately for the German forum.

Somehow, she looks sulky and bored to tears.

Not until they sort out the saggy tits.

I seriously doubt that it would sell much in Australia either, but here in Germany it might. Not heaps, but there might be a market. I reckon it would be serious competition for the Royal Enfield 350, and is quite possibly a better bike into the bargain. This Enfield: https://www.royalenfield.com/de/de/motorcycles/classic-350/

Well done, that man. Carry on!

The name "Diavel" seems to play on "diavolo", devil. No doubt in the sense of "as ugly as the..."

Now that you mention it, it occurs to me that the fuel level lamp nearly always glows a tiny bit, doesn't it? Even when the tank is full? I'm more and more convinced that the fuel level sensor was providing the path to earth.

I don't see how it could. The incorrectly connected green wire was on one end of the coil in the relay. The wires out to the headlights have no connection to there.

I hope taking it over the pits works out. Good luck.

@Tennitragic as I was chopping up stuff for the soup in the kitchen just now, your problem was still going round in my head. And a blaringly obvious question popped up that should have occurred to me at least hours ago, if not days: How much fuel is in the tank? If it is low enough that the fuel light is on, then all questions are answered and the case is closed.

Great. There is still the question of where the wrongly connected green wire was finding the connection through the coil and back to battery minus. Whether you want to dig into that is more or less your choice. Whatever the connection is, it must be very high resistance, otherwise the lights wouldn't work. The mystery connection to "earth", i.e. back to battery minus must be in the bit of the loom that is supplying the 12V to switch the new relays, i.e. in the original power supply for the headlights. If the mystery earth connection were not very high resistance, the Volts that are supposed to be switching the new relays would disappear there instead of appearing at the relays, so it must be a very high resistance leak. Looking at the wiring diagram, assuming ignition off, and the actual situation on your bike, i.e. with the new relays: The section of wiring that comes into question is connected to Pin 87 of the lighting relay (34) that is the output of that relay, and the source of the voltage in that part of the loom. It is fed on to The "input" side of the front brake switch (37) The "input" side of the rear brake switch (26) The "input" side of the horn switch, the high/low beam switch and the "flash" switch in the left handlebar switchblock (19) Up to there, it is fairly straightforward. Clean all the connectors, inspect the wiring loom for signs of physical damage, open up the switchblock and see what it looks like inside. Then there is the final bit of that part of the loom. First of all, the English legend to the wiring diagramm I linked to has a further mistake. It lists (14) as "oil level switch". This is obviously wrong, as the bike doesn't have one of those. The German legend on the next page lists (14) as "Kraftsoffpegelschalter", i.e. "Fuel level switch". The bike does have one of those, and the telltale that it is connected to is labelled "benz". Petrol (Gasoline) is "benzina" in Italian, so (14) is the fuel level switch. The part of the wiring loom that we are interested in also feeds the fuel level switch, so there is a further connection to One of the pins on the 12-pin connector to the dashboard (8) From the other side of that connection, the wire goes to the tell-tale for low fuel, back through the same connector block, and on to the low fuel level switch, which switches the incoming voltage to earth when it closes. In that 12-pin connector to the dashboard, according to the wiring diagram, there is also a connection earth to earth. So that is one possibilty: there might be muck in that connector that is allowing a trickle current to earth from the pin that is connected to the part of the loom we are interested in. Easy: pull the connector apart, inspect it, clean it. Then there is the fuel level switch, and this is where I am getting out of my depth. As far as I know, the fuel level switch is an NTC thermistor, one of these https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermistor Can someone confirm that, please? Going by the description, one of those probably never goes completely open circuit. If that is true, there will ultimately always be a (very) high resistance connection to earth through that component, even when the switch is "open", i.e. not low fuel level. I don't know for sure. If that is true, though, maybe there isn't a fault as such, but rather something like a "weakness in design" that showed up only because of the incorrect wiring, i.e. your green wire on the battery plus. Would anyone else care to comment on that last point? Anyway, it is up to you @Tennitragic to decide if you want to go looking for the mysterious earth connection, or whether you want to just ride the bike, because everything works.

What was happening there is actually fairly simple. One side of the coil in the relay was getting permanent 12 V from the battery. The other side was also seeing 12V with the ignition on, when the high/low beam switch was switched to that relay. Result: no potential difference (difference in Volts) from one end of the coil to the other. It doesn't matter if it is 0V at both ends, or 12V, or even 1000V. If there is no difference, no current will flow, no magnetic field will happen, and the relay wont switch. So, no lights. With the ignition off, the coil in the relay had 12V at one end, and the other end was connected to a part of the wiring loom that wasn't connected to anything else (with the ignition switch off). If all were well, no current should have flowed, the relay shouldn't have switched, and no lights should have gone on. But the light did go on, so therefore there must be a fault in the wiring loom that lets a bit of current go back to "earth", i.e. battery minus. But as I wrote further up, that can be addressed later.

Well it is, but I'm happy to have the confirmation.

@Tennitragic On second thoughts, don't do that. It's safe enough for someone with a bit of practice messing around with electricity, but if you fumble, you might get sparks. So Green wire off the plus, and tuck it away from the battery. Confirm for certain that the "lights on with ignition off" thing is not happening anymore. Connect the green wire to minus and check your lights. Report back, and we'll take it from there. PS: just so you know, the suspected high resistance short to earth is something that should be addressed, but is not immediately critically dangerous. Assuming it is there, it has been there all the time, and the bike hasn't blown up yet.

@Tennitragic Beauty mate, that's exactly what I thought you'd find (at least, the second picure is.. ) The green wire from battery minus to the one pin 85 is definitely wrong. It is electrically wrong, and explains why you are seeing 13V with ignition off on the 86 of that relay, which shouldn't be the case. When you take that green wire off the positive, I'm confindent that you could hold it to the minus and see what your lights are doing then. I reckon they should work normally. As I mentioned further up, there would still remain the suspicion of a high resistance short to "earth" in the wiring. That would explain "lights on with ignition off", and would provide a reason why the bloke added the new relays in the first place. If it's there, the lights would have been a bit dim. But finish off the first bit first.

On the pin on the relay, or on the (green?) wire that was connected to the pin? Either way, I reckon that's wrong. They should be the same, at least, I would assume.

That was the problem on my V35 Imola. It has a Bosch alternator originally, not the Ducati one, but anyway... I didn't actually have battery problems, but noticed that the charge light came on at higher revs. Seems like the problem was, the surface on the rotor that the brushes run on was a bit out of round, and maybe the springs behind the brushes a bit long in the tooth. Result: at higher revs the brushes started to float and loose contact. A new Bosch rotor would have been fairly cheap, but I bought a very expensive one from Silent Hektik to match the electronic ignition from them that was already in there. Not sensible, but I had the money at the time...

Don't try and save it. It's degraded all the way along, and the other end is likely to be not far off the state of the end in the picture. I bought one about a year ago, so they are available. I think I got mine from Stein-Dinse. If I remember rightly, I also found a cheaper one there, but was strongly advised by knowledgable and experienced people to get the expensive one, or plan on replacing it again in a couple of years. It's a bit of a pain to get to, so I bought the expensive one. If Stein-Dinse has it, I expect that the better suppliers in the USA would also have them. https://www.stein-dinse.com/en/item-1-1116274.html