While riding Saturnday I went through some heavy brush and one of my lights went dim. On sunday I was riding all day without my lights on and it was working fine, now when I finally put my lights on the machine started to backfire and cut out. When I tried to start with the electric start, nothing, even thought the lights still came on, it just made a clicking noise. So I started it with the pull cord with the lights off and it worked fine. After a couple more hours of riding (was far away from home) it started having the same simptoms as before when I had the lights on until it finally quit and I had to be towed the rest of the way home. If anyone has any idea what this could be I would greatly appreciate it.

 

It sounds like something caught one or more of your wires and pulled it a little loose. Start at the battery, and work thru the starter solenoid. From what you describe, I would guess a wire to or from the starter relay is loose, although it could be about anywhere (to the lights, for one).

 

If it runs fine under no electrical load, the first thing I would check would be the charge state of the battery. If the battery is low check for a broken or loose wire from the engine charging system to the battery. It sounds like you may have broken a wire that charges the battery. The reason it quit is that you were probably running off the battery and now it's completely dead. You see an alternator has to have a slight electrical boost from the battery to maintain the magnatism of the stators so when the armature turns it has a magnetic field to cut, thus generating electricity. If the battery is dead, no magnet=no electricity. So check the charging system wiring first, after the battery.

 

The Battery is only about 2 months old, and when the machine is shut off the lights still work which would lead me to believe that the battery is alright.

 

Have you considered the possibility of a short-circuit, or a reistive path to ground, in the lighting wiring? This condition would produce the symptoms you describe.

Turn to the wiring diagram in your service manual and unleash the Ohm-meter, tracing the wires!

Diogenes

 

I think Minehunter is dead on with this one. If the battery is run down you may still get light but the solenoid will only click when you try to start. It still runs when you pull start it because there is still some juice there. When the battery gets flat dead you have no juice for the ignition and you are dead.
My Polaris does the same thing if I cheat the light switch and put it in the middle to run all the lights at once, especially in the cold. The battery won't get enough charge and I get the same symptoms.
The fact that you snagged some bush and had only 1 light go dim leads me to believe you may a short there that's killing the battery. I'd start checking there first.