Installing volt meter

Not really but it is hard to find 12.5 volts like I have at the battery. Bulbs in the xmas tree are all 9.5.

9.5 Volts are a way to low, check all of your connectors, battery negative terminal to frame and engine case negative terminal.

Yeah, you're dropping a lot of voltage somewhere. You have high resistance in your circuit.
I'd fix that when you have a chance. Could be anything. Bad grounds, corrosion, loose connections, pinched wires.

M_a_t_t wrote: ...If you are checking with a 2 wire then you are seeing voltage drop across whatever circuit you are tapped in to and not necessarily the actual voltage of the battery.

Powering the measuring circuit shouldn't drop the voltage to be measured unless it's a really low impedance circuit - it isn't going to be - in any case, ever it it was, it doesn't matter as the voltage being displayed would be calibrated/scaled to 12 volts regardless of what voltage is actually measured by the circuit - i.e. the voltage displayed would be compensated for any drop caused by the measuring circuit. Of course, it could just be a horribly designed circuit that does impact the voltage displayed but that could be true of any 2 wire or 3 wire circuit.

Would that explain why my alt is cycling between 15 and 15.5 v at 3K?

Started checking grounds, could only find two, the main one off the battery and a 2ndary off the rectifier. Haven't pulled the tank and really dug into it yet. When measuring voltage at the horn, it's 12 v when using the battery ground, 11.2 when measuring using the horns ground wire. But then there's also a voltage drop on every positive in the headlight bezel. Just tossed this out to see if it lights any bulbs out there.

How is your fuse box?

What's fun is you have to test for voltage drops with the circuit loaded. It's much quieter to load test a headlight.

So going back to your horn voltage.
Negative probe on negative battery terminal.
Positive probe on positive wire at horn(you can back probe at connector at the horn )
Hold down the horn button and measure voltage.

Move your negative probe to the negative wire at the horn(backprobe at connector)
Hold down the horn and measure voltage.

Measure your battery voltage at battery putting probes directly on terminals.
Hold down horn button
Note voltage
There should be less than .5 v between the battery measurement and the horn measurement from above or you have high resistance in the circuit.

Robb2018 wrote: I'd considered installing a microswitch somewhere but would prefer to not have to bother with having to turn it on and off.

I soldered a wire to my KZ1000's ignition switch that runs to a relay to switch on and off accessories that I don't want to be able to have on except when the key is in the ignition.



I soldered in a second wire where the yellow one is. The yellow is what my wiring diagram said to use, and I double checked it with a multimeter before doing it. Check your wiring diagram before you attempt this. Your KZ900 is not a KZ1000-Police, so the colors might be different. Also, always confirm the wiring diagram with a multimeter.

This is pretty safe to do as long as the only thing being powered off of it is the switch on the relay. The power that the relay sends to the accessories comes from the battery instead of from the ignition switch. It also works rather well.

This is the relay that I used.

www.amazon.com/Pack-EPAuto-Relay-Harness...id=1593550877&sr=8-7

I don't recommend doing this unless you have experience with soldering DIY electric circuits, though.