I purchased a 2003 dxl 90 E-ton for my daughter last week and found out we have an electrical problem with it.

Here is the deal, the person I bought it from, family member, added a direct wire (with fuse) from the + battery terminal to the yellow with orange tracer on the wire harness side of the plug for the lights to work. WITH this mod the headlamp and tailamps work with the handlebar switch - okay cool, right. WRONG. He rode this atv for 2 yrs straight without a battery, always reling on a jump start - okay no problem again.

The first thing I did was purchase a new battery and overnight it was drained completely dead from being hooked up. So off to trouble shooting I go. Disconnected the - battery terminal and hooked a test light to the - battery cable and to the frame, power was running through it. This is a big problem. So I went through EVERY connector and disconnected, cleaned and shot silicone spray into the plugs to help out. Problem comes back to this hot wire he added to the + battery terminal for lights. I called to ask WHY??? He proceeds to tell me the lights did work correctly at one time even without a battery but the atv was rolled one time a while back and now the lights have no power to them when activated. He was told there was a fuse in the harness but neither of us located such an animal in there. So this is why he tapped into the harness on the headlamp side.

One item I found to be getting hot was a resistor under the front fender - smokin hot @! when this added wire is hooked up to the battery terminal. On a E-ton what does the resistor do? There is also a rectifier up under there also, what does it do? Could either of these be bad and cause the light circuit to not operate properly? I don't want to through parts at it just yet. Worse case the lights dont work. Everything else in the handlebar switch works correctly with out the hot wire added. Horn, Safety start switch, kill switch work great just the headlamp switch will not operate without the hot wire.


What do I do???? After looking over the harness cleaning connectors, it is in excellent shape so I think it is a replacement part that is the problem.
Thanks

 

I would take your test light or meter and make sure the light switch is working properly(might have gotten damaged when it rolled over?)..If it checks out ok work your way backwards from the switch until you find power..

 

my sons dxl90 is a 2000 mod. while adding lights to frt. rack found that the stock lighting runs off macnito systen rather that battier power. may need to look there may find the answer , if ur trying to run stock lights off battry this may be causing feed back thhrow system and causeing off draw