Well... that was a long "week". Sorry about the radio silence. Life got very complicated and my bike ended up sitting in my shed untouched all winter. I now have a bit more time and money on my hands though, and a friend of mine was also nice enough to let me store/work on this ol gal in his garage. So, for the past few weekends I've doing some work on it. I stripped it down to basically just the bare frame plus engine and wheels, cleaned up any corrosion I could find, stripped, inspected, and re-wrapped my wiring harness while also replacing any broken connectors I could find. In a glorious moment, I turned the key, and have electrical power, finally after two years of nothing... Well,
some electrical power. My gauges light up, as well as the running light function of my turn signals. My headlight wouldn't turn on, and my signals wouldn't actually flash when hitting the signal switch.
Also, when I kick it into neutral, I A; get no neutral light, and B; it won't turn over (could be a bad bulb, in which case, I guess the bigger issue would be with the starter, or, my neutral sensor could be bad which would prevent the bike from turning over. I'm hoping it's the latter).
Anywho, F64, I finally just got around to following your procedure, here are my results;
red probe on positive battery post(post is the metal part of the battery)
black probe on negative battery post
what is your voltage to the tenth decimal place? (ex12.4v)
11.7~11.8. Definitely low (ideally 12.7ish from what I read?), but it is a battery that's been sitting for quite a while.
move your red probe to both sides of each fuse
you will have 2 readings per fuse.
What are they to the tenth decimal place?
1. 11.7/11.7
2. 10.8/0.13
3. 11.8/11.8
4. 11.7/11.7
5. 11.7/11.7
Even with my limited electrical knowledge, #2 was a big red flag. I turned off and disconnected everything, cleaned up the contacts of the fuse box itself, put everything back together and tested it again, and this time the readings matched (unfortunately upon trying to double check, I was an idiot, didn't have the negative terminal tightly attached, and that fuse ended up blowing. I have a few spares but will have to search around to find them).
On the upside, after cleaning this up and before my bonehead move, my turn signals worked, as did my headlight, and my horn even wants to make some noise (they were very quiet and scratchy most of the time, but they let one good honk out). Anyway, onward;
Move your red probe to the ignition switch.
Probe each wire.
list voltage to the tenth decimal place and wire color
White/Black - 11.42
Blue - 11.20
Pink/Salmon - 11.42
White - 11.38
Yellow - 11.38
Red - 11.20
I tested these a couple times each and they seemed to fluctuate slightly, don't know how significant that its. Also, just a note. I had to replace both sides of this connector. The harness side was basically shattered away, and the connectors I bought to replace it were incompatible with the one on the new ignition barrel (they were almost identical, but the "latch" was on the other side, and the female plugs I bough had the "tooth" while the male had the "keeper". The ignition I bought was a male with a tooth, therefor the female would need the keeper). So, they were both replaced, with the main harness getting new spade connectors as they were the original ones and were pretty grimy.
Move red probe to a bare metal place on the engine case.
The reading should be a STEADY 0.0V
If the reading bounces around, you have ghost voltage.
Which means there is no connection at that point to the negative battery post.
Any reading over 0.5v indicates too much resistance in the ground circuit.
Thankfully, I am reading a steady 0.0V.
So, this is progress and overall I am optimistic about this thing, but still very much in the dark on how to proceed. Any advice on what my next steps should be would be hugely appreciated, and again, I apologize about the radio silence. I'll make sure I don't disappear again lol.