Okay its a died down thread, but as i was just curious if more had the problem, i checked and saw there were some more patients.
Why i looked, well i always put my connectors in vaseline since 1985, i'm a winter rider and they use excesive salt here in .NL, and having had numerous backlight failures my trusted Pappie Nolen said to me to check the ground terminal of the XT500 lighthouse lamp, and de-rust it and put some vaseline on it...
I've never had curious electric gremlins but for the connector i forgot because it was hidden behind the Trickers battery, until last week, the left bulb died on me, a few eeks after the right one blew...
Lazy as i am (hence lazymotorbike.eu) i stalled at fixing it, having a functioning righthand light, but yesterday the Left light returned to active service !
That's something i clearly dont like (yes i'nm strange i know it) other people would be delighted in these dire straits, but i don't like elektrics having their own will, so got my reading glasses to look at the connector, having read this thread long ago, and lo and behold, my left connector shows a bit of melt"wiggle" e.g. the surface had a little flat droplet like a bit of superglue on it.
That's the first stage of overheating !
And checking here its the same side of the connector, the black wire (yes its a true XT having Groundplug trouble...), thats curious, why are all the connectors melting on the same side?
It feels like quite a tight fit, had to use quite a bit of pull to get it off, so it could not be to loose a terminal was my first conclusion...
Until i looked closer having put on the reading glasses, if you look closely, you will see abrasive slithers in the headlight cover, and in the hole were the wire leaves the connector, that is really strange i thought.
So had an even closer look with the old lamp in the socket, the terminal isn't held by the brass terminals, but by the plastic socket itself, and if you look at the ground (-) side of teh socket the throngs of the brass connector are not to be seen !
So thats the culprit, a worn out casting orifice at the factory of N-D (or stanley?) causing the connector housing at heat up pushing the lamps throng away from the brass connector springs.
No new loom needed just a bit of blood sweat and vaseline
Pinch open your connector housing, two catches at either side AND one in the middle, open the back and slide the brass angled connectors out, and get a little slot(h)file into the orifice and take away the exess plastic, until all parts of the brass connector are easily to be seen when mounted in their place.
Put the brass prongs in contact with the file too, to get the oxidised skin away, and bend them very carefully until the have a snug fit on your new lamp, and use the Vaseline !
Put everything togehter again, and but for the cost of a new lamp and a bit of vaseline you will heve no problem in the forseeable future
P.S. as soon as you see the prongs from the bulb coloring, you know you got a bad connector housing, my right side was looking bright yellow brass, but the left side was more like the brown smudgy look of a century old Sax...
Here some pictures from the thread, will post my own tooling somewere in teh future at my own site.
Plastic completely melted at the mentioned spot around the groundconnector.
Here the new housing, with the way to bulky plastic obstructing the lamps prong making adequate contact with the actual brass connector inside, reduce that to 1 mm and the problem is fixed forever...
You dont even see a glimpse of the "B" shaped spings that make the electrical connection, this can be pure a result of the angle at which the foto is taken, but with my connector you could not see the lips of the "B" if looking full frontal...
