I need help locating a complete new wiring harness for a alta mach II atv. It wont start. It wont do anything. or help simplifying the wiring on it. Any help would be greatly appreciated

 

What do you mean by "it won't do anything"? Does the starter motor turn? Or does it crank but not fire? Do the lights work? Have you checked the fuse?

What is the history of this quad? Did you buy it not running? Have you ever seen it run?

What tests have you done so far? Do you have spark? Good compression? Have you checked for fuel getting into the cyclinder? Do you know how to do this? (The last group of questions are moot if your starter doen't even turn...)

Why do you think the wiring is at fault? Almost always it is far easier to fix the existing wiring than replace the whole harness. The problem with new harnesses is that they often aren't the same revision - connectors don't match, or the new harness is set up for DC powered CDI's on an AC ignition powered quad, etc. You often end up adding more problems without fixing the original one - making it much, much harder to troubleshoot.

 

It used to run its been sitting up for about a yr and now it wont even turn over. It has a good battery. The fuse is good. key switch test out to be good. The starter button has no power though and i thought it might have been one of the safety features had gone bad and tried to wire around them and messed up the harness creating a world of problems for myself

 

Follow the fat red wire from your positive battery post to a screw terminal on your starter solenoid. Follow the fat red wire from the other screw terminal down to your starter motor input post.

Set your brake. Make sure you are in neutral. You are about to bypass all safety interlocks.

Turn on the ignition switch and set all kill switches to the run position.

Take a screwdriver shank and short those two screw posts on the solenoid together. Some sparking is normal - starters draw a lot of current. This connects the battery straight across the starter motor.

Does the starter motor turn? Does the quad start?

 

I tried that to. It doesnt turn over. It kills the whole ignition system. Has me baffled. It's an automatic and I'm not sure how to tell its in neutral other than the tires turn freely. Short of hooking jumper cables to the starter I've tried everything I can think of

 

That actually narrows down the problem quite a bit.

When you jumped the solenoid posts you directly connected the battery across the starter motor, and the starter motor didn't turn. You also said that "It kills the whole ignition system". I assume that means you see lights go out, or something like that.

There aren't a lot of possibilites here. Let's go through them:

1) Your battery is bad. It cannot produce enough current to run the starter motor, and the voltage collapses under the heavy load of the starter motor. Lights go out, everything seems to go dead, etc.

2) You have a bad connection in the starter wiring that won't pass enough current (they use those fat wires for a reason!), and the starter motor stalls because there is too much voltage drop along the cables. Also rememeber that its a two way street here. You have to have good connections to the starter and good ground return connections as well all the way back to the negative battery terminal.

3 Your starter motor is bad. You put 12 volts right on the starter motor and it doesn't turn. We're also assuming for the moment that the engine will turn (it isn't frozen up).

4) Your engine is frozen.

That's it. So start eliminating the possiblilities:

1) Measure your battery voltage right on the battery +/- terminals with a meter. You *must* do this while you are simultaneously jumping across the starter solenoid. This measures the battery voltage under load. If you don't have above 11.5 volts at the battery then your battery is bad or discharged. What do you measure?

2) Measure the voltage right at the starter motor while jumping the solenoid as before. The meter leads are placed as follows: Red lead right on the starter terminal, the black lead right on the starter motor chassis. You should have 11 volts or higher while jumping the solenoid. What do you measure?

3) Take out the starter motor. Does it spin when connected up with jumper cables to the battery? Plus to the input post, minus to the starter case...

4) Spin the engine with a wrench Does it turn? Take out the plug to make sure the cylinder isn't filled with gas.

From experience I would say the overwhelming odds are you have a bad battery. This is based on your statement that the quad sat for a year, and you never mentioned anything about keeping it on a maintenance charger. Batteries self discharge over time, and batteries that sit around discharged (even partially) are severely damaged over days to weeks. You let it sit a year? Without charging the battery ever? If you let your car sit for a year, would you expect it to start up too?