Hi people,

My turn indicators are playing up and I am hopeful that somebody may be able to help me.

The symptoms are: When I press any of the indicator buttons (left, right or cancel) all of the indicator bulbs light up and go out as soon as I let go; if I hold any of these buttons in for more than a second or two, they all start to flash, and go out as soon as I let go.

I have swapped the green flasher unit for another and it makes no difference.

The wires that lead into the hazard-lights switch are not connected to the switch, but that switch has never worked since I've owned the bike.

Somebody suggested that it might be the indicator time-out relay, but I'm not sure that my bike has one of those, and I don't know where to look for it if it has.

Someone else suggested that it may be the connector leading into the instrument cluster. It doesn't seem to make any difference when I turn the handlebars to-and-fro.

Please, does anyone recognise these symptoms? I must admit that electrickery is a dark art to me and BMW electricks seem to be more complicated than Twin Peaks.

Believe it or not, but has the starter motor appeared to have played up now and again? There is a chance that the brushes inside have dusted up the works enough to cause odd things with the lights. Have a look at your headlight, tail light and instrument lights when the indicators do this funny dance to see if they also flash or are erratic. This is not uncommon and there are a few posts located here about such things. It's not difficult to remove the 'computer', battery and starter motor to check the condition of the brush pack and to clean out the innards. I used brake parts cleaner and some clean rags, put it all back in, but then ordered a new brush pack from Motobins UK and fitted them later on. Mine did this very same thing. It's been fine for a year now, after many, many kilometres. Just a guess that you might consider. I'm sure others have some ideas as well.

Thanks TWB, I'll take a good look at these things.

The bike has only done approximately 100 miles since it's had a replacement starter motor (second-hand).

The headlight and tail-light work normally.

The K is now having an enforced, early lay-up for the Summer (It's my winter hack), as it's tax and MOT has expired, so I can take my time and strip it down properly.

Yes TWB is right about the starter. As the starter provides the ground to the load shed relay, all kind of gremlins can be found on the bike if there is a problem with the brushes.
Here are the parts waiting to be installed on my spare starter.....This is the rebuilt kit.

Check the fuses with a meter and make sure that they are all zero ohms.

A friend who has a K100RT had a similar problem and it turned out to be a crook fuse. It wasn't blown just not conducting 100%, I think it was round 4 ohms which was enough for the item that uses the circuit to work but like the starter it was not supplying a good connection.

I can't remember which one but that was the problem we found after we had overhauled the starter because I thought it was that.

Thanks K Freak,

I'll replace all of the fuses with new ones, just to be sure.