Hey all! - a quick question:
all 4 of my blinkers and dash indicators stopped working suddenly. The flasher unit makes a noise when both left, right and cancel are activated from the switch. ground is good and there is 12 volts to at least one of the pins on the flasher. Am I looking for a short somewhere, or is there something simpler?

Thanks, Paisano

did you do anything on the bike since the last time everything worked normally (like dis- and reconnecting the flasher relay)?

well, I just changed the chain - maybe that did it!

after looking at the schematics of the internals of the flasher, I'm thinking the capacitor is shorted. I've ordered a univesal replacement and will see how that goes - thanks!

Capacitor? I've never seen a flasher unit with a capacitor in it. Usually just a wire wound round a bi-metallic strip which opens and closes a set of points to turn the flashers on and off. Maybe your's is an electronic one.

Some trouble with ground wires.

Capacitors are common as in blinker flasher units , the charge rate / capacity of the capacitor is what governs the flash rate .... same deal as the intermittent wiper on your car ,in which either a variable cap or resistor is varied to increase or decrease the wiper rate . They are not ( normally ) load dependant so if you wanted to vary the blinker rate you could fit a solid state flasher unit to your blinkers . I think someone has recently mentioned this in a related thread

Now how did I know you would pipe up and tell me Im wrong . I meant ( ass covering here ) the wiper timer units , the retro fit ones , mine has a timing circuit and a power transistor thingy