charging problems

Justin, the white wire to the fuse box is the main power lead. It comes off the regulator/rectifier and one leg goes to the BATTERY via the lug on starter solenoid where the big red battery cables connects and the other leg goes to the main fuse box. This is the power that goes through the main fuse to the ignition switch. IT is first in line so by disconnecting, you caused the short to quit showing on the light bulb because the short is down stream. Next is the white wire in the headlight shell. There should not be a white wire in there, near as I can think. I might be wrong as I am not as familiar with your bike. Power comes off the ignition switch and goes either to a headlight switch on the right switchgear or directly to the hi/lo switch in your left switchgear. In any case, TWO wires should come off the hi/lo switch. One is a red/yellow and the other a red/black. THESE are the two wires that go to the headlight harness inside your headlight shell... not a WHITE wire. These wires power the low and high beams respectively. Only one will have power based on the position of the hi/lo switch on the switchgear. Something ain't right in the headlight shell. The last wire should not be "shorting" or drawing power is the RED wires coming off your battery terminal. There should be no RED wire coming off your battery terminal. The RED subcircuit on any Kawasaki is a RED wire that comes off the ignition switch directly and goes back to your running light in the tail lamp. It doesn't share wiring with any other stuff as a safety measure.

You need to figure out the white wire in the headlight shell and the red wires connected to your battery. Trace them and find out where both ends go. One or both MAY be needed because someone hacked the wiring harness due to a bad wire.

justinlitch wrote:

ok, I tried the light bulb test to see if there was a short. So I disconnected the positive terminal and put a 12v light bulb between the pos batt terminal and the pos bike wire that Mfolks suggested for seanof30306 in this post here kzrider.com/index.php?option=com_kunena&...ew&id=224336&catid=4



Anyway, sure enough the light bulb lit up, so there must be a short somewhere. Now as far as finding the short. I start unplugging harness to see where the light goes out. I unplugged the left switchgear connector then the right switchgear connector, the light stayed on. The light did go off when I unplugged these three things but maybe it is supposed to so I'm not sure. The three things where the connector to the fuse box (of which no single wire kept the light on only the whole thing plugged in), the connector inside the headlight that goes to the ignition switch (I tracked it to a white wire), and the last was the red wire that was on a two wire connector coming off the positive battery terminal.

So why are those three connectors making the light bulb go out and which one is really shorted? Anyone have any ideas? Thanks.

Justin