Mis-directed Smoke - electrical

[Rasputin]

I am working on my 81LH. I have all of the lights working, or rather sort of working.
Problem is that when I move the signal switch to the left, the right side signals flash. The indicator in the guage cluster shows left turn as well. When I slide the switch to the right, the right cluster indicator comes on, but the left signals flash.
I just had the complete harness out when I was painting the frame and other goodies. I have tried to make sure the ground wires were good by scraping away paint at the ground points to assure good contact.
I probably have some wires mixed up but electrickery is a foreign language to me. I am electrically deficient. Fact is I am lucky to be able to install the battery without it being backwards.
I also do not have a 81LH wiring diagram so I am using other models diagrams to try to help sort it out. The fact that I am color deficient does not help matters either.
Any thoughts from those in the know?

[crazy steve]

You must have the wires to the lights swapped (chocolate for left, dark green for right) where the lights connect to the main harness. If the mis-connection were 'upstream' of that, the indicator light would also be wrong. Simple fix...

The LH wiring is the same as the 'other' bikes except for the 'safety interlock' feature similar to the XJ11 bikes.

[Rasputin]

If I swap the chocolate and green wires in the headlight bucket nothing changes. Do I have to swap the rear wires as well?

[crazy steve]

Did you install the ground wires on each turn signal? These would go under the nut that holds the signal on, then connect to the main harness ground. If those are missing, you can get a weird 'backfeed'.....

[Rasputin]

The two in the headlight bucket that go under the stalk are in place for sure. I am going to head out to the garage soon so I will check as to what the backs look like, but IIRC there are two wires from each that are connected to the harness.

[crazy steve]

There's a single wire from the switch that feeds both turn signals and the indicator light for each side, so if they don't agree with each other (or the switch), it's either some wires are mixed up or a grounding issue...

This assumes the harness is unmolested. If some repairs were done, you may need to split the harness and see if the wires were swapped there. The only other thing I can think of, is how many wires come out of the signals? Should only be one, if you have two then you need to verify where those are going i.e. one to the lamp and one ground.

[Rasputin]

If some repairs were done, you may need to split the harness and see if the wires were swapped there. The only other thing I can think of, is how many wires come out of the signals? Should only be one, if you have two then you need to verify where those are going i.e. one to the lamp and one ground.

This just may be the clue I need. I had to cut the 2 wires going into the rear signal stalks, in order to repair the sockets. I also had to add some different wire to make them long enough to correctly route them. I may have plugged the wrong ones in as the colors at the bullet connectors are not stock colors now. i will get out the multi meter and check it out. Will let you know how it turns out. Thanks!

[Rasputin]

They now work thanks to Steve's help .
I had one set of rear signal wires backwards and that was directing the smoke to the wrong places.
4 way flashers work but are a bit fast, so I replaced the flasher with another and it was a bit erratic so I may have to get a new one of those.

[crazy steve]

Congratulation! Glad to help!

Yep, 'strange' ground paths can give you some very weird symtoms...