Blew a fuse

So, the other day I went for a ride and found that my headlight wasn't working (I was on a short ride). I tried high beam and it was, so I thought "blown bulb" however ...  it was then I noticed that my neutral light was very dim and that the indicators were not working properly (not blinking).

After I got home I pulled the headlight off and checked the bulb.

All was fine, which wasn't a relief, because now I had to find what the problem really was. I lifted the seat and found that a fuse (was blown). 

Now its worth revisiting the bike and note that its not "original". As you can see below the airbox is missing and you can make out a tray under the seat which holds most of the electricals:

Including the slim battery:

which has a "quick plug" type connection with a built in main fuse (of the blade type).

It was rated at 15A and I noted (in the manual) that the main fuse should be a 20A. I replaced the fuse then I checked wires to look for some sort of short (wire rubbing against inside of the metal bucket is a candidate) and all appears fine.

This leaves me with 2 questions:

1. what caused the fuse to blow
2. how then (with the fuse being blown) was my high beam getting power?

So I pulled the fuse and put my Multimeter (set to Amps and it reads up to 10) and began looking for problems. I quickly found that the headlight worked sometimes, but with a bit of movement went off and the meter rapidly climbed. I'd then turn off the light and resume after "moving it till it was ok again".

It took me a couple of days (no more than 4 hours each session) to work out that it was actually the loom rubbing against the steel of the bike ...

because when I relieved this (lifting up) the much higher power drain went away and the headlight operated normally.

I looked around and found:

1. the loom ran under the cable for the exhaust valve decomression cable and

2. the loom ran under a bracket which supports the tank from wobble. I thought perhaps if this was lifted up it would free the loom from fouling the bracket and consulted the manual:

ahhh hah ... so somehow this had been put together wrong some time back (probably 2016 when it was imported into Australia).

So I re-ran the cable back under the loom and ran the cable over the support:

which then lifted the loom away from that cable:

and took the weight off where the loom goes into the headlight support bracket.

... which I also "splinted" with some plastic (cut a section from a 2L milk bottle), some duct tape and a cable tie (which should also prevent it pulling out of that (if it feels so inclined).

So, its now been test ridden and seems to be doing ok ... 

I fully appreciate that there will be some copper getting atmosphere in there now, which is less than ideal, but to do that job I'd have to strip back even more than I did as well as undo the loom searching for the wire, cutting and joining in a new piece and putting it all back together (probably adding several hours).

Lets see how long it lasts :-)