Blew the main fuse again...

[TeeCat]

After the time and expense of installing a new solid state reg/rec as I had time over the last two weeks or so, I thought I'd cured my bike of blowing the main fuse a few weeks ago. Last Saturday, I fired the bike up and let it come up to temp, but didn't have time to ride it.

Today, I thought I'd take it around the block before hiking with my wife and her friend. I put it in gear and didn't get two feet from the curb (fortunately, unlike last week when I pushed the POS for a mile) before it b*tch slapped me again. Same thing.

I've about had it. Is there anyone on here who's in Maryland, near Baltimore, and knows their way around a multi-meter and a wiring harness ? Or does anyone know of a reputable shop in Maryland who can hunt a ghost like this? I'm willing to do so much, but I know my limitations. This is supposed to be fun, and it's not any more, nor is it fair to anyone else in my life. There's way too much time spent d*cking about with this money pit when other things and people are getting short shifted.

Thanks, guys... suggestions welcome.

TC

 

[TeeCat]

Incidentally, the one thing that seemed to be common to both times was that I was pulling away in first. I'm just trying to find some rhyme or reason to this weirdness.

 

[pumps]

I guess it is probably a hot wire that is shorting to ground that causes your fuse to blow. I might try to unhook certain things like the tail light, turn signals, headlight, and see if you can reproduce it.
Maybe following every wire and inspecting it for cuts, chafes, etc or using a meter to check continuity to ground on various components.
Can you think back, does a certain turn of the bars left/right cause it? Another thing is if your harness is cut up you know mikes sells a replacement one. Main Wiring Harness - Fits: XS2/TX650 1972-73 - ( Black covering ).
OEM Ref.# 306-82590-30-00

 

[TeeCat]

pumps, both times were left turns, kind of. I was wondering if something in the headlight bucket could cause a thing like this... maybe an unused male connector in there or something? I had to put a wire nut on something that Josef Mengele did in there... maybe I'll pull the light out and see if I can find something obvious.

I was looking at those harnesses, but I'm not really willing to throw another $80.00 at this thing on the basis of a guess.

But both times it cut off just as I was pulling away in first and turning/leaning a little left.

Oh, and the bike has no signals at the moment... not since I got it.

 

[pumps]

In that birds nest in the headlight would be a good guess. Possibly the motion of you letting the clutch out causes something to go back against the shell inside?I might look at it and if nothing found , put some insulating material in inside the shell to block any thing from touching? All your headlight shell grommets in place and good ? Unused signal wires covers up? But they shouldn't go hot unless you used the switch.

 

[TeeCat]

pumps, all good questions that likely have suspect answers. No grommets that I can see, at least where the wires go through the back of the bucket. The one unused green male coming off the headlight has been uncovered, but would that be hot when the light's on? If so, that's a candidate. Here's an idea how this butcher did things:

See the four or five wires that are bare? I don't know if they're hot, but they were just taped all together as far as I could tell, and they went to nothing!

And look at the wiring to the headlight. He has it wired to come on with the key... okay... but last year I had to put a wire nut over where he had twisted and taped.

I mean... look at this mess...

I fear that I'm going to get in here and hold my breath and undo all of this somehow and try to put it back in some semblance of order just to even begin to try to sort out what this maniac has done to this bike. And even with a schematic, it's going to be a nightmare, because he's made such a holy mess.

TC

 

[Sundie]

something else you can check (that often goes bad) is to pull your left sidecover and shake the alternator loom around. The wires usually get shaken around and oil soaked and heat cycled and worn. Shake it around, see if your fuse blows.

 

[TeeCat]

Sundie, I was thinking of that, but I think I really need to try to get this nest sorted somehow first, since I'll always be concerned about it if I don't try to do something about it.

 

[XSLeo]

I think TeeCat has redone all the altenator ,reg/rec wires , just installed a new reg/rec. So I don't think thats the problem.
Your headlight bucket does look a freight. It can be fixed.
TeeCat. Over on the garage there are a few people around your area. They are getting together next weekend. The 27th. Their names on there are Skidro, Mistermoe, Scabber. Seem like good folks. They might be willing to come help out.
I'll be going down. A few days early or a few days after I could come over and help.

 

[inxs]

- do you have a multimeter or circuit tester?

 

[TeeCat]

Leo... thanks for the tip on the other guys. I still have the original alternator wires, by the way... just changed the brushes. Also, Leo, the only way I'd ever concur to your going to so much trouble is if you were already in the area... that would be WAY beyond the call of duty. At this point, the only thing I know to do is start with that horrific bucket, but not sure how to proceed.

inxs, I do have a multimeter... just don't really know how to use it to good effect.

I need a Dogfish Head Raison Dietre now...

 

[XSLeo]

I was looking at your pics and my diagram. those bare wires I think are from the key switch and headlight switch. The blue wires are lighting. The red/yellow wire feeds power to the dimmer switch with key on. The black /yellow wire is ?
Another wire color ? maybe brown might be power out to front brake switch.
The wires going to your head light, the green male is your low beam. It just dangles out. It should plug into the green female under the tape. The yellow with the wire nut is high beam, the black is ground.
The turn signals should be chocolate/left, dark green/right. These should have covered female connectors.
There should be several, three I think, female covered black wire connectors with multiple openings.
I think the wires wrapped with black tape are your PM's doing. If you wonder what PM is, Previous Moron. These could be his rewire of the head lights.
Your bike has a later model switches? The diagram doesn't show a headlight on/off switch. The head light comes on with the key, the dimmer switch has three positions, low, high, park.
I think the park position is just the tail light and dash lights. Later models put this position on the key switch.

 

[XSLeo]

Here's the diagram from my Clymer book.

 

[TeeCat]

Leo, if you're correct, then I'm running the hi-beam all the time, right? And I have always thought that my bike might have a later-than-stock switch, and it may be broken. See... there are so many variables here that I keep getting off track.

The PM (I like that!) has disconnected/eliminated a lot of things... signals, hi-beam indicator on top of the bucket, neutral light... it's a disaster. So, I suppose I'm stumped as to where to begin, but the first thing is to correct this fuse blowing issue.

I'll have a look at this diagram. This has to be a dead short somewhere.

 

[XSLeo]

I had to shrink the pic down to get it to load. If it's hard to read I can e-mail the original to you. If you have a Clymer's book you probably have the same diagram.

 

[tx650]

This reminds me of one of the specials I rebuilt,same thing as soon as I pulled the clutch and went to move off....Bang off she goes.
It had me stumped until I realised it was only happening when I pulled the clutch so i removed the tank,pulled the clutch and bingo found it.
It was the clutch cable(bit of bare cable ) touching a coil wire everytime it flexed.Someone had routed the cable wrongly and all I needed to do was re route them under the coils and fasten them (zip tie) to the frame.
I found that in most problem diagnosis the elimination process was the best fault finding method.

 

[Sundie]

over the past 30 odd years, and my own occasional mangling, i think i'm going to totally rewire mine from scratch this winter, getting rid of excess wiring, and things like the auto signal canceller, head light auto on, etc, and going to weatherpac connectors. Should be fun.

 

[TeeCat]

Guys, thanks for the continuing support/ideas.

tx650, you may have a point. I have a PAMCO and, though things have been fine til now, this all began quite literally overnight, so there is some unknown "variable", and I suppose I need to start looking for something like what you describe; those little PAMCO wires all sit there in the tank tunnel around the coil.

Also, Leo... I have always wondered about this bike's bar switch; it's identical in appearance to the Mike's #24-2058:

But I'm not sure that mine is not damaged, as the signal lever does not return on one side and some other lighting parts are missing, as I have said. This may be the reason the PM did what he did.

So, I have some decisions to make. It seems to me that I'd be foolish not to try to set the bucket wiring right in order to eliminate that as a possible problem, but do you think I should order a new, functional switch like the one at Mike's and try to go from there, or try to get this issue resolved first without doing that?

This week, I'm going to try to disconnect the light completely and see if the bike will run and if I can reproduce the problem. If I can't, then the issue is somewhere in the bucket. I replaced the fuse and the power comes on, but I still have not tried to kick the bike to see if the fuse blows.

 

[TeeCat]

Update:

The bike is firing... not blowing the fuse when I kick it like it was before the reg/rec. But upon inspecting the bucket a bit more, there are NO grommets in the bucket where the wires go through. For longer than I have had this bike, unprotected wires have been passing through the two holes in the bucket.

TC

 

[pumps]

Do you suppose there is a chafed wire? Not sure where you could get some grommets...parts view on biker.net give a # 256-84353-60-00 and says it uses 2? Does that sound right? Seems like mine has more holes than that. I'll bet you could find something that would work. In a pinch you could use a threaded pvc electrical connector from the hardware store.