What now...(electrical)

Godric

XS650 Enthusiast
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Hey yall, so I made a post yesterday concerning my ignition fuse blowing repeatedly and the problem was a loose ground which I fixed. So I had the bike fired up this morning (81 xs stock) letting it idle, running seafoam through the system and whatnot, no problem. Had it idling for half an hour or so, intermittently revving it, no problem. I went to take it for a test run and.... problem. It died on me almost right out of the gate and I couldn't start it back up, so I walked it 1/2 mIle back to the house to investigate. Fuses are good, no loose grounds, headlight area is good. It's so damn frustrating! Been cussing it somethin fierce. Any ideas what it could be now? Like what could make it run fine then stop altogether? The lights still work, but the horn is way weak.
 
....ignition fuse blowing repeatedly and the problem was a loose ground which I fixed.
Fuses are used to prevent power being shorted directly to ground. If a wire or component is inadvertently shorted straight to ground, the fuse blows to stop current flow... and the subsequent fire. So... a loose ground will not cause a fuse to blow.
I'd start by figuring out what was blowing the fuse in the first place. Good luck.
 
It's good that it lasted a little bit because that can help you find the problem. If I didn't know where to start looking, I might disconnect the positive of the battery and hook some kind of beeping continuity tester or meter to it, and the other lead to the negative terminal. Then everywhere there are wires shake them and move them around until you hear a beep (or the beep stopping). That will get you in the ballpark of where your short to ground is. While you're at it look closely for cuts and abrasions. Could be melted wires inside the harness. Otherwise short will be in some circuit that's live when the bike dies, of course.
 
There's three places where the wiring can give you the intermittent fits.....well, there's more than three but here's the first three for me because of personal history.. Number one, where the harness's go through the headlight bucket. There are rubber bushings that go around those headlight cut-outs for a reason. Make sure they're in place and no damage to the wires. Next up is where the stator harness travels around the drive chain. You need to remove the left cover for that check. That small bundle of wires need to be secured as low as possible to that downtube to prevent the chain from clipping them. Last for these three is the wire bundle for the rear lights that's located under the seat, especially if somebody has been into them with aftermarket wiring connectors. The old "ran fine 'till I hopped on her"......lol

Weak horn- could be battery. I'm not sure about everybody else's bike but mine isn't charging while its idleIng unless I've got the idle set at around 1500. A half hour of idle could be the equivalent of leaving the headlight on for a half hour while the bike is off. Be wary that you should run a fan across the engine if she's going to be running but not rolling, 'specially in upper 80's outside temps.....(91.4 deg. here while I type, and we ain't that far apart)
Other opinions may vary.
 
Turns over but won’t start? Might be that SeaFoam. I was taught NEVER use fuel additives. I made the mistake of using it once in one of my 750s and it gelled up in my filter screen and my float goals.
 
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There is a grommet in the battery box to isolate the positive battery cable. The location is pre fuse. I had the box slice through the grommet and the cable sheath. Fried every ground wire. Lucky to get things disconnected in time to prevent fire.

I run the cable through an extra piece of webbed vinyl tubing at the box now.

Just a warning for all out there, because I have seen many of those grommets damaged from rubbing. After it’s worn through, you have a knife like piece of sheetmetal and only a thin plastic sheath left before you ground out.

When it grounds out, how fast can you get to and disconnect your battery?
 
Could be melted wires inside the harness.
If it's an original harness, it's suspect. The more tape I unwrapped from the wiring harness in "The Basketcase", the more bad news I found. :( It was totally roached. I could replace it, but nothing is going to be in the "stock" location after the rebuild, so my only recourse will be to create my own. Good luck!
 
^I had marginal charging forever, and I finally narrowed down what it had to be, and started unwrapping the harness. Some po in replacing the fuses had made some of the ugliest twist connections you can imagine, all barely together and aged to the color of an old penny.
 
AHAAA!!!! :thumbsup: Hopefully, they left you enough slack to skin the wire back to shiny copper. If not, you'll have to "piece it out". Just make sure you have good physical connections before you solder properly (and put your shrink wrap on the wire before you do!). If I had tried that on "The Basketcase", the wiring harness would've looked like a snake that found a nest of mice! :doh:
 
If you have power, but it's weak... then check your battery & charging system. As mentioned above, if you had it idling for a while...at idle it's not charging the battery. Riding around for a bit above 3000 rpm's should get the system charging---but then on your ride if it then dies out, my hunch is that your charging system isn't working that well AND/OR you have other issues (fuel, etc) that stalled the bike, but you still had a weak battery that wasn't enough juice to get it to start up again.

I'd start with charging your battery first. Then see if it will start. If it does, then test your alternator...and see if it's doing it's thing above 3000 rpm's. If it doesn't start then there are other issues at play.
 
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