a very bad ground

i pulled my clutch in and hit the starter.. everything indicated a near dead battery.i tried it again and then i saw smoke coming from my front left blinker wires.its hard not to panick. my neighbor just happened by and we found the problem and it wasnt where/what you would think.it was the main ground wire at the frame that worked its way loose and was causing heavy arcing. i guess the small little blinker wire was catching all the over load. refixed the ground bolt and fixed blinker wire and all is well again.the bike is raring to go again,, moral:grounds can do funny things!!!!

hydrolazer wrote:

i pulled my clutch in and hit the starter.. everything indicated a near dead battery.i tried it again and then i saw smoke coming from my front left blinker wires.its hard not to panick. my neighbor just happened by and we found the problem and it wasnt where/what you would think.it was the main ground wire at the frame that worked its way loose and was causing heavy arcing. i guess the small little blinker wire was catching all the over load. refixed the ground bolt and fixed blinker wire and all is well again.the bike is raring to go again,, moral:grounds can do funny things!!!!

You got that right! Nice save, some people ditch a bike when goofy stuff hapens like that.

hydrolazer wrote:

...it was the main ground wire at the frame that worked its way loose and was causing heavy arcing...

That happened to my 400, too - without the arcing. It just broke. Ran one second, dead the next.... Old wires, man...

I had a sort of similar problem with my bike when I got it. Someone had rewired the bike, and every earth from the handlebars and lights was running through the two small fri\ont indicator earth wires! It did the whole smoke from teh headlight area a few times and blew a couple of fuses before I found the badly melted wires and the bunch of cut off and taped up earth wires!
Moral: check for goofy modified wiring.

Regards, Andrew.