TOPIC:

ok so i have had my 78 kz1000 for about a month now. i have put ~1000 miles on it already and it has been great. but last week i took the handle bar off to check to see if clubmans would work with the raised tank and one of the yellow and red wires was a little frayed. i didn't have any thing to fix it at the time so i put it together and forgot till yesterday. two days ago i was riding and came to a stop light and the bike just died. all the lights went out and it wouldn't start. i shook the handlebars and the oil light came on i hit the started and it started right back up. weird i thought. well today it did it again and shook it and it came back alive. so obviously there is a short somewhere. it hapened again on the way home only thins time it took awhile for me to shake the short lose. and when i did the starter will not work, nothing it doesn't do anything. it will kick start on so not a big deal. riding back home in the dark i noticed that the lights will dim out for a sec then come back on. and that the break indicator light will only come on sometimes but the light out back will always work.

so what i need help with is should i be looking for multiple shorts or will fixing the one wire fix all of the problems at once. luckily i have the weekend off so i can tinker with it.

thanks for any help you guys have

Pursuit the symptom you have... get any obviously frayed wires protected with tape... heat shrink tubing is better. Be careful / gentle with this 30 year old electrical stuff.

Don't dig into the harness or switch gear any more than necessary... less you slid into a wire, connector, switch contact rebuild/replace project. Don't ask.

Best of success and let us know how it turns out.

Ok so i got to working on it today.

in the right throttle box a red and yellow wire was cut all the way threw. it went to the starter switch. so i reconnected it and put the bike back together. still doesn't start. the light dims but the starter doesn't attempt to run.

then the lights cut out. so that wasn't the only problem.

after looking we found out what wire was causing the short. a white wire that connects to the battery then splits into a white wire and to a white wire with a red stripe. the connection to the battery was completely destroyed. so i striped it and warped it around the positive battery cable.

the short was completely gone now. but the starter doesn't work.

then wile driving a fuse blew. it was the one that is in line with the white with red stripe wire. it was a 20 amp. i had a 15 with me so i put that in and it drove for a bit and blew that. got it home by connecting the fuse terminals. the fuse gets hot while the bike runs so i put a 30 amp fuse in it. i checked all the connections that i could. the line turns from white with red stripe to just white after the fuse. it then goes to the gauge cluster. i'm assuming that it is part of the ignition system.

any ideas to why the fuse is blowing. I'm assuming going from a bad connection to a good one would be causing it.

Did you accidentally clamp any wires in the mirror mounts?

If not:

1. Go buy a box of 20 amp fuses

2. Take off your tank and disconnect each bundle of wires that leads to your handlebars (should be a plug for each bar). Turn on the key and see if your fuse still blows. If it doesn't, connect one at a time and see which one blows it. Should be easy to track down from there.

3. If you've disconnected the wires running to your handlebars and you're still blowing fuses, open up your headlight bucket and disconnect one bundle of wires at a time and trying the ignition until you're no longer blowing fuses. Look up the wire colors on the problem plug to figure out what it leads to. From there you should be able to find the short.

This is based on my experience with my own bike (an '81) so it may be a bit inaccurate, but hopefully it's enough to help.

i did open up the head light. there were some cut wires in there that must have been from the turn signals that the bike no longer has. if i blow the fuse again i will tare into it one bundle at a time like you said.

Geesh. You really need to buy a service manual with a wiring diagram. The wire that was cut wasn't red/yellow. That wire is over in the other (left) switchgear and is the wire going from the hi/lo switch to the headlight harness. The wire that was cut in the right switchgear was yellow/red. That is the hot wire from the kill switch which goes down to the coils and powers them. The wire that runs to your starter solenoid is BLACK. It comes off the kill switch as well and goes through the starter button and is what triggers the solenoid to close; allowing power to go through the switch from battery to starter. The white wires you are messing with... The white wire STARTS at either your regulator/rectifier and goes into a tee connector or one leg starts in your regulator and one leg in your rectifier (don't know if the model you have has a combo reg/rec or separate) but anyway, they go into the tee. Out of the tee, one leg goes to the battery via a lug on the starter solenoid where the big red battery cable connects and the other leg goes to the MAIN fuse which you have been blowing. I would replace all this wire and replace the fuse box to fix the fuse blowing issue. Keep in mind that your mucking around in the right switchgear with the cut wire may be causing the main fuse to blow as well... any electrical problem on the bike (short) is likely to blow the main fuse and not the two smaller fuses. Dumb design I guess.

Look in the "KZ Information" tab above, then "Filebase". Chances are the wiring diagram is posted for your model. If not check some of the other 1000 diagrams, they could be similar enough to help you.

A good way to insulate wires that have been cut without using tape is buy some heat shrink tubing slightly larger in diameter than the cut wire, cut a piece about 3/4" long, slide it over the cut wire, heat it up with about 1/4" hanging over and while it is still hot use a pair of pliers to squeeze the 1/4" area flat.

This was an acceptable repair for wire bundles on the F-4 Phanton II aircraft in the USAF.

yeah i found the wiring diagrams they helped alot. i think the reason the main is popping is the white wire that is supposed to be on the solenoid is connected directly to the battery.