Not electronically saavy

I'm hoping that someone can point me in the right direction. I am no good when it comes to electronic stuff. (I apologize in advance for the length of this post.)

The '80 KZ750-E1 is having a sporadic electrical issue. It started suddenly about six months ago and has puzzled me ever since. At times when I hit the starter button the starter will begin to turn over for a short fraction of a second and then all of the electrics will go dark.

No lights, no idiot lights, no horn, no signals, no click from the solenoid, nothing at all. And all of the fuses are just fine.

My brother in law George found that jumping the starter solenoid seemed to get the electrics back for whatever reason. And oddly, when he put the volt meter across the positive and negative terminals on the battery, the lights would come back on for the time the terminals were jumped. It occurred to me that perhaps I was causing the problem by hitting the starter button too quickly so I began holding it for a bit longer and that seemed to help. Until last week that is....

Last week the same problem occurred. The starter kicked over for a brief moment then all electrical stuff stopped working. I wasn't certain how George jumped the starter solenoid so I didn't even try experimenting there. I was able to bump start the bike, but it only ran raggedly on two cylinders. Once I shut the engine off the electric stuff stopped working again.

I'm not sure what I did next but after a few minutes I was able to get lights on the dash again. Bump starting the bike got her running on all four cylinders as if nothing had happened and she made the twenty-five mile ride home without a hitch.

I know this explanation is long and lacking in a lot of information, but it is the best that I can do. Can any of the gurus out there make any sense of it? Can anyone offer any starting points of what to look for so that I can resolve the problem? I'd greatly appreciate it.

Thanks in advance,

Scott

Hey Scozzmo,
First of all, I believe that you're a member here so the "visitor" tag indicates that you didn't login before posting. Your posts will be searchable by your profile and your post count will be advanced if you login first.
I don't have any experience with your exact model, but I think I recognize your symptoms. I think that one or more of the wires in one of the harnesses that jump from the frame to your steering head may have become an intermittant open. Take a look at all the harnesses on both the frame and the steering head. Is there one place where a cable wrap is causing the harness to flex all in one place? Is there any one place where the harness folds tightly rather than flexing gracefully? You can check it out by putting the bike on the center stand and fiddling with the harnesses. I'll bet you can cause and cure the problem just by moving the wire harnesses around. Of course it's possible that the problem has gone so far that the open wire cannot be reconnected by just moving the harness. If that's the case you're going to have to get very familiar with a Volt/Ohm meter to find the culprit.
Good Luck
KZCSI

Check battery cables and connections. Sounds like a loose or bad connection that makes innermitant contact.

What Harry said.

I was also thinking loose battery cables particularly at the part when you mentioned your brother put a meter across the battery terminals and everything lit up. I have had exactly the same issue. The connections can look fine at the battery but can actually have come loose and are faulty. Get a screwdriver and make sure they are tight. Put the probes from a volt meter on each battery terminal and you should see about 12.6V. Then put one probe on the + terminal and the other on the frame. If you dont see the same 12.6V then the problem is a bad connection on the - terminal either at the battery or where the neg cable is attached to the frame or motor.
Good Luck

Hey Scozzmo,
I have doubts about "And oddly, when he put the volt meter across the positive and negative terminals on the battery, the lights would come back on for the time the terminals were jumped."
It's more likely that he put the meter from the positive to the frame which, if the meter could stand the current, would bridge a bad ground connection.
Easy Fix if that's the problem.
KZCSI

A voltmeter has very high resistance. It won't "bridge" a ground connection.

Hmmmm... I wonder if my connection timed out during my original post. I was signed in when I started, but I took a bit of time while typing the post.

The connections at the battery were the first things we looked at. This weekend I'll pull the tank and start tracing the wiring harness to see if there are any loose connections, kinks, or worn spots. I'll also be pulling the switch housings to make sure that they are clean and in good shape.

Thanks for all the pointers folks. I'll let you know what I find.

Scozz

if putting pressure on the battery terminal makes it work and the connections are clean, your battery post is likely broken internally. Before messing with a bunch of other stuff, I would see if it behaves with a different battery. Don't want to spend the bux, use some jumper cables.

the only other thing I can think of that would react to pressure on the terminals is a bad connection ast the other end of one of the battery cables. the ground end or the end on the solenoid.

-Duck

Post edited by: Duck, at: 2005/12/12 13:22

Buy a can or tube of dielectric grease and any connection you clean, shoot a bit of grease into it before you reconnect. It could very well be just a bad bullet connection. I've had many!

All of the suggestions look great so i am not going to repeat any of them, just make sure that as you are looking over your wires pay close attention to corosion. You may only be able to see a little bit on the end of a wire, but under the wire casing it may be worse. Like this weekend i tried disconecting a plug that had a small amount of green corrosion showing on it and so i tapped it with the handle of a screw driver and ended up with a pile of corrosion on my garage floor.