Jugaad

Jugaad - The Motorcycle Relay Episode

The head lamp of my motorcycle had started acting up. Once in a while it would refuse to light up , once in a while it would just die while commuting, mysteriously to switch on later on its own. I was concerned about this erratic behavior. The other lights like the side lights, the brake light worked well though.

I took the motorcycle to the garage. The mechanic over there was able to spot the reason of the trouble quickly. He raised the seat and pulled out a black part. He said that that was the culprit. He took out a length of wire and passed it into that black part and rejoined it in the circuit. The headlight started working fine again. He told me that he had repaired fault by redirecting the current and everything was fine.

When I asked him as to why not replace the faulty part, his reply was that he did not have that part in stock and also it was difficult to get. Doing it in this manner was a regular thing and everything worked out fine. My next question was if the part did not perform any useful task, why was it there in the first place. He did not have any convincing answer to that.

The headlight was working as usual and I did not notice any other malfunction anywhere else. But the scientist inside me would not stop scratching up my brain. What is the exact utility of this part and what effect does it have on the overall system was the question.

A few days later I visited a dealer of motorcycle spare parts and showed him the part in question. He had same part in stock. When I asked him the function , he said he did not know. He only sold the goods and did not have much knowledge about functioning of each of them. The mechanic at his shop replaced the part in my motorcycle.

I came home, put the number of the part in google and looked around. Suddenly everything became clear to me. It was headlight relay. An electronic part that senses when the engine of the motorbike is running and only then allows current from the battery to power the headlight.

What is the use ?

Many. One the battery used in motorcycle is shallow cycle battery and is only used in starting the motorcycle. The battery does not have much power even when fully charged. It is generally enough for only 10 auto starts. Once the motorbike starts the engine recharges the battery. This relay makes sure that the motorcycle starts easily by isolating electric current from all other places and directing it to the starting mechanism. That is one.

Second if the engine stops for whatever reason, signal stop , other stop etc the headlight does not remain on , thus saves battery from draining.

In the evening while parking the motorcycle for the night even if you forget to switch off the headlight, the headlight will not drain the battery during the night.

All the above uses are in the short run. In the long run this increases the life of the battery.

A small part, so many uses.

A small wire makes the current direct. Overtly we do not see any difference but internally many things change.

Thus this is more of a stop gap measure and not a brainy idea.

So next time you look at a jugad , do consider all the eventualities and fallouts.