high beam head lights not working

2002 VFR 800 ABS 20,000 miles

the 2 low beam running head lights work fine. hit the high beam switch and the 2 high beam lights dont turn on.

the switch on the bar works, i can hear the relay turn on. my volt meter says its getting power at both the left and right bulb sockets.

when everything is plugged in like normal and i turn on the high's i notice a few things happening. the relay turns on, (i can hear it tick, doesn't mean it's working) the high beams dont and neither does the high beam light indicator on the dash cluster.

if i UNPLUG both bulbs from their sockets and leave them dangling not plugged into anything and i hit the high beam switch the blue indicator light will come on, as soon as i plug in 1 light to it's socket the left or right the blue indicator light goes out and the bulb doesn't light up.. again the low beams work fine all the time.

kinda stumped here because i can see the highs and lows are tied together on the same power line

if i plug the high beam socket into the low beam bulb i get the same result, dash high beam indicator goes out and the bulb doesn't turn on.

both high beam bulbs work, they aren't burned out and when i plug them into a completely separate battery they work fine.

do i have bad bulb plugs on both the left and right? is the relay bad? is there a bad ground somewhere in the system effecting both plugs? not enough power? any ideas how to solve this problem?

 

The indicator lamps draws a lot less current, so if you have a bad connector, it would light without bulbs, adding the high current Hi-Beams drops the voltage down so low you can't see it. I know taking the front fairing off is a PIA, but you need to check all connections.

 

after some trouble shooting it turns out the problem was the high beam relay, it was activating but not 100%. more like 10%. which is kinda confusing because it sounded like it was working fine. we jumped the leads without the relay and all the lights worked fine.

not really sure what caused the relay to go bad, maybe old age, thanks for the help.

 

Relays can age. Mostly from things like arcing at the contacts. Fair bit of current for a high beam so the contacts are likely to spark a bit.

 

I had a problem with high-beams, turned out it was the fuse in the fuse box being loose and kinda worn out. I ended up replacing the entire harness though, when I looked at the bottom of the connector in the black box, it looked worn out compared to the othrer connections that hold the fuses. My bike was a carbureted low tech bike compared to your set up though...Cheers, glad it was a happy ending. You have three items really in this case; The high/low beam relays, your handle bar switch and the fuse panel.

 

hmm i was going to go with bad ground. glad you got that sorted out quickly.