I was riding home from work last night and came to a stop light when a guy in a truck beside me tried to get my attention. He told me that my headlight was out and that he was a rider too, so he knows I'd want it on.

I pull over into a mall parking lot and sure enough, light was out. I ride with the hi beam on during the day so I switched it to lo beam. When I did, it came on. Switched to hi and went off. but after messing with it for a while both were coming on somewhat erratically.

I started twisting on the hi/lo beam/turn signal/horn assembly on the handlebar and then they came on and stayed on fine the rest of the way home. This morning when I fired it up, it acted funny for a second, but stayed on all the way into work without any problem. I'm guessing I haev a flaky connection in the housing. The bike did sit out in a nasty thunderstorm a couple of days ago while I was here at work, I wonder if water could be the culprit. Anybody else have the same thing happen and what did you have to do to fix it?

 

I crashed mine and had to replace the right clip-on with controls, my headlight sometimes wouldn't come on after I started it, but I played with the starter button and it would come on. Try taking off the left controls and checking to see if there is a clean connection. They are just contacts in there, won't look too complicated. Probably got some crap on one of the contacts. There are two screws holding it onto the clip-on, with a dowel so you can't put it back on misaligned.

 

My old CB750 (now it is my life time project bike...) had the same kind of problem and it was caused by the starter switch. When you press starter switch button, headlight supposed to comes off till you release the starter switch button to save electricity for starter motor. And when I got my 87 Cane, headlight was constantly flicking. I checked light switch on the left control, connector, fuse... finally I fond out that the battery terminal had bad connection. I cleaned it and reconnected. I don't know these help your problem or not. But I think good place to start. Good luck!!