No beep beep

Hi Gang, 

So the horn does not seem to work on my kz900. I did all the usual trouble shooting. Used a multimeter and checked for power at the horn when I pressed the button and nothing. Ok then I took apart the thoroughly inspected the left hand controls and confirmed the button contacts seem in good shape. Next I looked at the wiring diagram and saw that the horn button is only  wired to the ground leg of the circuit which is grounded to the control housing itself through a little tab that extends out of the button inside the controls. Now I did change the handle bars to black painted bars from bikemaster and I am wondering did I somehow isolate the ground for the horn? Was the left hand controls grounded to the old KZ bars which made its way back to the chassis somehow? Has anyone else experienced this and did you have to grind off some paint under the controls to ground it? 

Thanks!

   

wrote:

Now I did change the handle bars to black painted bars from bikemaster and I am wondering did I somehow isolate the ground for the horn? Was the left hand controls grounded to the old KZ bars which made its way back to the chassis somehow? Has anyone else experienced this and did you have to grind off some paint under the controls to ground it?

 

Yes. Yes. Yes. And yes.

I knew what you did before you described what you did because it's also what I did.

Well then that is what I am about to did! I also thought about just adding a thin gauge ground wire and run it back to the chassis with the rest of the control wires and skip modifiing the bars. 

Thanks!

 

You just need to scrape a bit of the bars coating off so that the control housing grounds on the bars again.
once fitted the scrape marks are hidden under the control housing. 

I ended up adding a wire to the controls and then running it out to the chassis. Works great now. 

 

The wire is outside the protective sleeve?

No, I wrapped electrical tape all around the length of the bigger bundle to secure it. 

 

Just an FYI. Electrical tape turns gooey, sticky. Might be better to remove the tape before it gets like that and fish the ground wire into the existing harness sleeve.

Or use non-adhesive tape.

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