i am pretty sure but not 100% that my lights worked when the engine was off I'm not able to check right now its parked at my dads garage and I have to wait till thurs to go take a look at it and make sure.

I am not sure if his is the same but I just bought it off him for the woman and ill be able to check that out to by the same time maybe sooner

now assuming it is dc......

 

Let me know what you find. If it is AC then things get a little more complex, but not impossible.

If they are DC powered, then do the following generic test of the charging system:

If your lights are DC powered, and the regulator is working, then there is no possibility for headlights burning up because of high voltage. And that is kind of the only thing that can burn up two headlights at the same time on a previously working quad. A bad connection can burn up one light, but two at the same time? Extremely unlikely.

So the combination of knowing whether your headlights are AC or DC, and that your regulator works or not, will shed a lot of light on this very strange problem....

 

ok so I am 100% that my lights are dc NOT ac. I plugged in the fixed wire and tried it out after a min or so i started to nice black blotches on the wires both green and blue so i turned them off. as for my rectifier that was the whole issue on my other topic (gio t3 won't start) and I bought a brand new one did the tests and was getting the right reading 14.3ish if I remember properly. I am going to go get a meter this weekend to do the test again since last time i just borrowed a friends since it seems im going to need it a bit lol.

so if the charging systems are fine what would be next?????

 

Definately do the regulator test again. 13.5 to 14.5 volts on the battery terminals with the engine running at medium fast speed with the headlights off. For your lights to be burning up I think your voltage will probably be high. If so your regulator is bad.

Other causes? None, other than error in the reported data so far (like your lights are really AC powered, for example). The lights work by applying 12 volts to them. They light up at that point and work normally. You have both lights gettng over hot and burning. That means too much power, and that means too much voltage. There is no other alternative for DC powered lights.

As we move forward don't be afraid to back track if your retests don't reinforce your previous data. We can't proceed sucessfully based on bad data, so if any bad data pops out it needs to come straight to the fore front - so we can regroup and attack the problem again from a better vantage point.

 

well I won't be able to do the test till after the weekends cause i am going away but I will post the results when I get back.
now just asking questions but if it was my regulator wouldn't my engine have to be running to do what you are saying? my wires are burning up with just the key on NOT running the engine at all and the the kill switch not pushed In. so in that case wouldn't there be no power going to the battery just the lights draining the battery? (I am using my old battery that still runs lights but not enough juice to start it lol)
I can't help but think that green/black wire has something to do with it. Didn't you say you had the same assembly? what does it do on your quad?
I don't get the woman's quad till after the weekend but my last resort is to rip apart its harness to find out what goes where lol.

 

This is bizzarre in the extreme. Your lights burn up when the quad isn't even running? . This is brand new news...

Are you sure... How can this be? The only voltage source is the battery, and the lights are designed to work just at this voltage. I have a lot of new questions:

1) Do you have to have both the ignition on and the "kill switch not pushed in" (whatever the heck that means...) for the lights to burn? What happen if you put the kill switch in the other position? Does the burning stop? An would that be the "run" position or the "stop" position?

2) Do the high beams have to be on? What happens if you switch to low beams?

3) What happens if the headlights are turned off?

4) If you go back to the "burning up" setting, what happens if you remove the headlights in question? Do the connector still burn up?

5) When the lights are burning, are they at normal brightness, or are they running dimmer than normal?

6) What is the value of your fuse?

Here is my wiring diagram which uses a switch that looks identical to yours. I'm starting with page two since that is where the switch is depicted in the lower left corner, but I'll follow with sheet one for completeness. I took a little liberty when drawing the diagram by showing the three position headlight switch plus the high beam switch as just one switch with four positions. From a functional standpoint at the switch connectors the switch assembly works as shown in the diagram - noting that the wiring diagram headlight position 4 is actually the quad headlight switch position three - with the high beam switch pushed in. I hope this makes sense....





You said in your last post something about ripping apart the wiring harness to trace wires. Oh my God no . That's crazy, and totally unneccesary... You don't need to do that at all. Here is a much simpler way, but it involves some logic:

Look at your taped up wiring harness... From any connector you see wires going into the wiring harness, and your problem is that they come back out somewhere - but you don't know where - right? Wrong. You may not know initially but you can find out easily. A yellow with a purple stripe wire entering the wire harness will come out somewhere, and when it comes out it will still be a yellow with a purple stripe on it. The same rule applies for all of your wires. You honestly don't expect a black wire entering the wire harness to come out at the other end pink, right? So why unravel the harness to follow it physically with your eyes (what a mess). Why not just follow it by color? It goes in blue, it comes out blue. What could be simpler?

So expose all your wiring harness connectors (On my quad that means removing the front plastic "hood" covering the majority of connectors). Log every connector with its wiring colors *on the wiring harness side*, then connect all the greens together, all the blue with purple polka dots, etc. If you're concerned about a dubious apparent connection you can verify that connection with a meter.

I traced the whole wiring diagram on my quad in an hour using this technique (it took a little longer to enter that info in the schematic capture program). I never unbundled a single bit of harness tapeup. It is not necessary. The quad vendors use different colored wires for different functions for a reason. How else could they efficiently troubleshoot manufacturing defects?

So one final thing to ponder... You have that rogue wire on the handlebar switch assembly that blows a fuse when you connect it where you think it hooks up. Find out the wire color on the *harness* side of the switch connector. What is it's color? Search your entire harness for the same colored wire in the *harness* side of any connector set. Then follow that wire and see what it connects to. That will give a major clue as to what that wire function is.

This is a lot of info in one post. I hope my logic and reasoning makes sense...

 

ok so i tested everything today and it is all running fine.

my regulator is working getting 13.8-14.1 on the meter.
As for your questions
1) the ignition is turned on and the kill switch is in the kill position. it doesn't matter what position the kill switch is in
2) All my other lights are fine no signs of melting or marks on the wires at all
3) If I turn my headlights off none of my headlights work lol
4) If i remove the bulb from the connectors nothing happens
5) They are running the same brightness as far as I can tell
6) my main fuse is a 10

If i use the meter on the wire that connects to the bulb i am getting 10.5 if this is any help .
As for the mystery wire the other end of the connecter (where the green/blk wire should be) is a green ground wire. I am going to try and do up a wire diagram for my quad maybe that will help out lol

 

So you don't have too much voltage (plus it burns when the engine isn't even running), so it cannot be overheating because of that. That leaves only 2 possibilities that I can think of:

1) Bad connections at the headlight connector(s) dropping voltage and dissipating power while the lights are on. You did measure 10.5 volts with the lights on. Where is the 2 plus volts being dropped? Let's say each headlight is 36 watts. That would be 3 amps multiplied times 2 volts, or six watts being dissipated (as heat) somewhere for each light. That's a lot. If it is at your connector then we're back to bad connections to the light at the light connector.

2) The headlights you have installed are way wrong and draw too much current for the headlight connector to handle. Are these headlights stock, or have different lights been installed?