hey guys over thanksgiving i took my new to me yfz out to gordons wells in the imperial sand dunes, the first two days it ran like a champ but on the third day 15 minutes in it blew a starter fuse. I threw in the spare and rode for 30 minutes, then it popped again so i had my friend in his rail tow me back. I got back to camp and looked everything over it all looked so I put in a new fuse and it blew instantly so since all the wires and connections looked good I assumed it was the starter relay so I went to the store and bought a new one, as well as a big pack of 15amp fuses. I drove back to camp and changed out the fuses and the relay and all was good I drove for three hours then it popped another fuse so, I threw another in and drove back to camp.

once back at camp I proceeded to take apart all the connections and cleaned them out with compressed air unwrapped all the wire bundles looking for a short I found nothing all the wires were clean and intact and all the connections were good.

Do you guys have any idea what could be wrong? to me it seems like there is a short somewhere but i couldn't find it. Where would you guys look next?

 

you're on the right track, but instead of looking at it, get your voltmeter/ohm meter and start checking for shorts/continuity/resistance in that portion of the harness. is any of the wiring harness getting hot or look like it has been hot and near the wire jacket's melting point?

 

I was using a multimeter but I couldn't really figure out what was normal and what was wrong. Since the bike is grounded to the frame already I don't really know how to tell if there is a short or if its just the ground the way its supposed to be.

 

measure how many volts the starter is pulling when you're cranking it. check its ground. does the starter sound like it is dragging? something is pulling a lot of amps there. we'll help you find it.

 

I would bet your harness has worn through and is grounding on the frame. That is exactly how mine acted with that issue.

 

jaster the starter sounds fine there is zero tells everything goes from awesome to dead randomly

scooter i looked everywhere and nothing looked like it was shorting out on the frame i even peeled the wire bundles apart to see if there was anything in there and still nothing looked like it was shorting out. do you thinki should just buy a new wiring

 

so if the starter is ok and not grounding out internally, and your ground cables ain't getting hot around the starter, is the solenoid getting way too hot? i'm beginning to lean towards Scooter's reply. we've got something going to ground and killing the fuse via short circuit. you may double check all quick connects and make sure the small lead wires around the solenoid area are good to go. it's in the starter circuitry sounds like.

 

okay i will fire her up next chance i get and see if any thing is getting to hot. just out of curiosity what leads you to believe that it is in the starter circuitry.

 

zz8t, I had a heck of a time tracking my short down. The bummer is I was on an overnight riding trip with my brother. I found mine by random chance. I was working on it at camp around dusk. Had gone through the wiring harness twice when I happened to see the flash from the spark in the quickly darkening evening as I tried to start it. My shorted wire originated from the handlebars/starter button and ground out on a downtube in front of the radiator.

 

because that's where you said it was popping the fuse and cranking the starter pulls a lot of amps with the 12 volts to turn it over. as scooter stated, it could be up at the handlebar area or down around the battery area. just gotta keep looking and metering.