A brief background: I'm a new rider of about a month and an owner of a 2006 S40, also about a month. As a whole, this bike runs very well and I didn't notice any big problems with it before about a week ago. It has some minor leaking coming from the engine, which I was planning to address first until the headlights and horn stopped working.

Problem: I was riding at night and I was switching between the high beam and regular beam at times. (luckily) Not too far from home, the headlight started flashing and then finally went out. So I put my hazards on and coasted back - the turn signals were working and so was the rear-light.

What I found: I thought at first that the headlight just burned out, but after looking through this website I saw that other people with a similar problem also had issues with the horn not working and turned out to be the same problem with my bike.
(http://suzukisavage.com/cgi-bin/YaBB.pl?num=1297947989)

So, I guess my question is:
- Do ya'll have any advice before I start trying to take my bike apart to fix this problem? Anything related to diagnosing the issue and any specific tools you use to patch up electronics and/or taking off the gas tank (electrical tape and so on, or any quality of life suggestions)

- I was ready to start taking the gas tank off to look at the connectors (which I'm still not exactly sure what they look like) until I noticed my bike's petcock. It's much different than how it looks in the manual and I didn't want to destroy it. It's attached below as image1.jpeg

P.S: I was thinking about taking it to a mechanic who deals with motorcycles at first but most of the one's closest to me were backed-up with too many jobs or only worked on sports bikes. I have a tiny apartment garage that I'm using to store my bike where I'll be working on it as well.

twhitus wrote on 09/14/20 at 15:20:54:


Did you mean these black connectors? The first picture is from the right side of the bike when looking at the bike head-on. The second is from the left, looking at the bike head-on.

I tried the one from the right and it seemed fine. Not loose at all.

No, the right side is the kickstand relay and the left is the signal relay. The connectors have wires leading to the handle bars

Thank you everyone for helping me out with this. So I recently had the chance to take the fuel tank off because I wasn't able to find the connector without doing that. For anyone that is new like me, I'll include a picture of it in case anyone else is confused about it.

Turns out the problem is a pin is corroded - in the second picture. Is there any way I can clean it without buying a new one? If it's a dud, what's my best course of action?

for the pins id use some electrical contact cleaner and a fine grit sandpaper around 400 grit.   you can roll the sandpaper so the course side is inside and slide it over the pin to sand off some of the corrosion.  if there is room you can use needle nose pliers for a bit more grip while sanding.  for the plug end roll the sandpaper grit side out and you can slide it in and out of the connector.  
once its clean and you have verified things are working unplug the connector again and use some dielectric grease to protect the connector from future corrosion. I have used vaseline in the past because im cheap.
if the connector is beyond repair you can always snip the wire off the backside and just run a jumper.

the rubber bumpers are available on www.partzilla.com and are cheap 2-3 bucks each.

I temporarily managed to fix the problem. After a couple more rides though the light and horn stopped working again.

I was looking around and trying to find the cause and I think I might have discovered what it was and I need some advice.

The attached picture shows what looks like some spliced cables? It comes straight from the left handlebar. The bike came with a signal helper mod, and I think that's why these look like this. I think that sometimes when riding these wires rub on each other and cause the terminal to overheat.

If this is the underlying problem. what can I do to fix this?