no gauge lights? 81 750ltd

i have no tach or speedo lights, hard for me to believe all the bulbs are blown, i do have nuetral, oil, brake and all those lights but no dash

Do you have a wiring diagram? I'd first check the fuses as the old glass tube ones may look o.k. but have failed internally either from age or vibration. A test light or multimeter will help in troubleshooting this.

If the fuses look good then open up the back of the gauges and check the wiring. It sound like a broken ground wire causing all lights to go out like this. On most Kawasaki's of this era the ground wire is usually black with a yellow stripe.

Do you have a tail light? On my '80 750 LTD I have a blown fuse, caused by a yet to be found short, that causes me to loose gauge lights and tail light (the brake light still works).

On one of my KZ650s it was a broken wire in the harness. They use wire splices better known as a "T" that makes one wire into 2 or more. Wires can break at these points. It can be either a power problem or a ground so check for 12v on the bulbs. You can then simply tear into the harness, (not the easiest thing), or make your own "T" from a working bulb to the non-working as a hack repair.

kztee wrote:

Do you have a tail light? On my '80 750 LTD I have a blown fuse, caused by a yet to be found short, that causes me to loose gauge lights and tail light (the brake light still works).

ya i still have a working tail light. i tried to go out to the garage and work on her but its to damn cold, only in ks is it 70 one day and 20 the next:S

I know the feeling. In Iowa it was 50 degrees yesterday and melted most of our snow. Now we are in the middle of an ice storm with some snow forecast on top of it!

Hey bud.. The tach and speedo usually use 2 different connectors. There will be 2 common wires, power, which should be brown and comes from the ignition switch, and grounds, which should be black/yellow or yellow/black. The grounds are behind the headlight, youll have to remove it. The signals, if your bike is similar to mine, run thru that headlight bucket, and there are brackets of sorts attached to those signal stems with the grounds attached to them. Those grounds are mucho important, pretty much grounding out your whole lighting system except for the oil, nuetral. If thats not ur problem, then make sure your getting power from the ignition switch to the gauges. Good luck

violentvintagecycles wrote:

Hey bud.. The tach and speedo usually use 2 different connectors. There will be 2 common wires, power, which should be brown and comes from the ignition switch, and grounds, which should be black/yellow or yellow/black. The grounds are behind the headlight, youll have to remove it. The signals, if your bike is similar to mine, run thru that headlight bucket, and there are brackets of sorts attached to those signal stems with the grounds attached to them. Those grounds are mucho important, pretty much grounding out your whole lighting system except for the oil, nuetral. If thats not ur problem, then make sure your getting power from the ignition switch to the gauges. Good luck

ok man im going to try this, i went out after my heater got things warm and i couldnt find squat

cott10r wrote:

........ hard for me to believe all the bulbs are blown..........

Thats exactly what I said when I got the beast 5 years ago but indeed all the bulbes were blown. Just old I guess. Remove the backs of the gauges and pull out the bulb holders and take a look.

How did it work out ?

cott10r wrote:

i have no tach or speedo lights, hard for me to believe all the bulbs are blown, i do have nuetral, oil, brake and all those lights but no dash

The instrument bulbs blow very easily. Mine always went if the battery was funky because it lets voltage spikes onto the electrical system lines. Those tiny bulbs are the canary in the coal mine.....

Concur with above. When I first got my 400, all the bulbs were blown except the neutral light. Once I replaced them, everything was fine.

My vote would be to try changing the bulbs and see if that fixes the problem.

kztee wrote:

Do you have a tail light? On my '80 750 LTD I have a blown fuse, caused by a yet to be found short, that causes me to loose gauge lights and tail light (the brake light still works).

same disfunction on my 78 1000 ltd...no tach lite no speedo light, no running lite.brake lite is fine and everything else works...i have guage bulbs....i m just wondering out loud if i change them, will they help restore a circuit and make my
running lite work?....i can twist wrenches, but electrical is definitely not my strong suit!!!!:laugh: ...keith