Neosophist you are no doubt correct - H4's without a relay is for sure the root cause of the trouble, thanks for reiterating that. FWIW: relay is ready to go in, swtichgear had been bodged and rebodged by the time I saw it but has now been sorted as I said previously, (and is definitely not being bypassed), the wire upstream of it, between the connector block and the lamp has been replaced because that was no longer conducting under load.

As for the diagrams (I didn't have the Haynes manual to hand when I made that post), they're based on what I found after a bit of googling. That said, it was the Haynes manual diagrams I was looking at on Sunday and the difference in the wiring, (i.e. repeated pin ordering on the vfr lamps, flipped ground and lo-beam on the rvf's), is there in the Haynes, and that is what my question was.

(The rvf diagram I looked at did appear to be a scan of a Haynes page tho. Is it different from the Haynes speedy? Or is it the vfr one that your talking about?)

Anyway, crappy or not, what speedy said about assuming the ordering of the wires is not significant sounds fair enough to me as a general principle. I'll be sure to check that the correct filaments are firing when everything goes back together.

Thanks again guys.
RR

The Haynes diagrams mimick what was posted. Don't worry. All you need to worry about is making sure that when you rewire it, you get the connectors/switches/relays wired correctly. Green is earth, and I would guess (only a guess, please check!) that the top, central pin on the headlamp is the earth, and the two filaments are the bottom two. Which is which? I have no idea, but applying 12V will tell you, and it's probably possible to tell just by looking. The diagram shows that blue is hi beam, as it goes to the high beam and passing flash switches.

The Haynes manuals aren't infallible. For example, the pic of where to insert the feeler gauge when doing valve clearances is wrong, as they've stuck it between the cam and rocker, rather than the rocker and valve shim!

No worries speedy. I have enough to bring this sucker home now. I'm okay with wiring in the relay and as far as which pins are which on the lamps I'll check and repeat the winning combination on both lamps.

Thanks again for you help,
RR