I assume it's electrical

Well I ordered a harness and a reg/rec from ebay today because I looked under the bike and the reg/rec has 3 yellow wires spliced to it which is weird because the wires that should be going to it are laying on the side of the frame.

The new wiring harness has the fuse box and all the connectors still attached so I think for 15 bones it's a good deal.

I'm also looking at another coil for about 15 bux. I took the plug wire off of plug #1 and the wire is cracked under the boot.

I know any good auto parts store should have the fuses I need but the problem is all I have is autozone and advance auto. Go figure.

Thanks again for the advice. Hopefully I can make something of this bike.

Cool, you got a GREAT deal on the harness! Hope it's up and running soon.

Was wondering if you knew about the coils too? I have the ones where you can unscrew the cap at the coil and supposedly remove the wire.

I was checking out the plugs and when i pulled the boot off the plug the wire cracked inside. What do I do to replace the wire?

I know you can get dyna coils for a direct replacement but I can't shell out that much. Do you know what coils from what bikes will work so I can hit up ebay?

I'd imagine that 3 ohm coils will work with your bike.

My 82 GPZ1100 B2 had this type of coil with replaceable sparkplug wires. I believe 7mm will fit snugly. Dont forget the ferrule(sleeve) on the old wires to use on the new ones.

I found rubbing alcohol to be a good lubricant for the sparkplug wires.

Good. I checked out the coils and they physically look in good shape...the one wire is just trash. I really should hook the battery back up and just see if I'm getting power to them.

Is the coil wire replaceable? You can run an easy test with a multimeter to check if your coils are good if you know what the test specs are. On page 252 (or 8-4) of your manual is a troubleshooting guide you might find useful. Also check out the ignition troubleshooting guide on Pg 116 (or 5-11). Somewhere in there there should be a testing procedure for your coils, but so far I haven't found it. Ok, I just found it: Pg 118-119 (5-12 to 5-13) measuring coil resistance. Most of the time this will diagnose a bad coil. Just set your multimeter to ohms and for the primary test set it to the lowest ohm setting (on my cheap little multimeter it is 200) and turn it on. Touch one probe to the black (or green) wire and the other probe to the red wire. If it reads around 1.8-2.8 ohms, the primary winding is good. Now to check the secondary winding: set your multimeter to the next highest ohm setting with a k (k=1000). On mine, it is 20k (yours may be different). Now touch one probe to a spark plug lead and the other probe to the other spark plug lead. If you get 10.4k (or 10,400) to 15.6k (or 15,600) ohms the coils are most likely good. If your readings on either test are significantly different than spec, then the coils are probably bad. Check your readings several times to be sure. Hope this helps, keep us posted on your progress.

Yeah the wire is replaceable. You can see the screw-on connector at the coil pack in this picture, along with the broken off wire.

Whooo! Boy!

I started taking the wiring off the bike to replace it and boy do I have a mess on my hands. This is turning into a mess.

Although the bike has brand new (although incorrect) tail lights and a new headlight all the connectors were hacked off of them and the original harness.

Also, I was a little perturbed to see that the connectors off the back of the gauge cluster were hacked off and spliced. It's honestly a nightmare so I'm not shocked that an electrical problem was causing the bike not to run.

I'm on the fence on whether or not to replace the connectors or get a new cluster. After a quick check of the Kawasaki website and checking eBay, the clusters available to me are out of my price range at the moment.

That truly sucks to hear Steve. I'd replace the connectors, it's a lot cheaper and there's no sense in buying new gauges until you hear how she runs. I'd concentrate on fixing the ignition wire connections that allow it to run first. You can always go back later and connect the gauges, lights, etc. Right now the goal is to get ignition spark so you can get 'er running. Sounds like you got a bit more of a project than you bargained for. Hang in there buddy. That's one fast and powerful bike you got there. It's gonna be killer when you get it running.

Yeah. I started checking out the replacement wiring harness and matching up connectors last night and I realized the harness is off of a different model of KZ1100.

The only thing that is obvious to me about the difference is my bike has the front brake light switch wires and the wires for the run button integrated into one plug. The replacement harness seems to have the run switch wires as a 4 pin red connector and the two wires for the front brake light switch separate. Any thoughts?

If that is the only difference then you have a few options.
1) You could replace the 6 pin plug from the run/brake switch with the appropriate 4 pin plug and crimp on some flat pin connectors for the brake switch so it can be connected separately.
2) Replace the 4 pin plug from the new harness with a 6 pin plug that matches the existing plug from the run/brakelight switches.
3) Get rid of one of the plugs (doesn't matter which side) and crimp on the appropriate connectors and connect the wires individually.

All these methods should work as long as you match the wires up correctly. I think option #2 would be the best route as according to the wiring diagram (pg 311 of your manual, kz1100 b2 which is the '82 model) this is how it was originally wired. Option #3 is probably the cheapest and easiest way, but it'll look messy and will not be waterproof and you'll have to be extra careful to hook up the wires so the connectors don't touch each other. Definitely not professional looking, but as a quick and dirty method, it will work just as long as all the wires match. I hooked up my reg/rec and igniter box this way and it works fine, just looks messy, and I have to be careful when I jostle the wiring not to allow the bare plugless connectors to touch each other where they attach into the receiving plug. Triple check your work and you should be fine.

After looking at the manual it looks like the new harness is from a KZ1000 but I don't see any other differences except that one connector.

There's a bunch of new pics up in my photobucket if you're bored and want to look.

s621.photobucket.com/albums/tt298/solar_eclipse2/