New rider, new bike

In my opinion, 12.1 to 9.6 is too much voltage drop and indicates a bad battery. It might have enough poop for kick starting if the rest of the system was up to snuff, but has no chance with a bodged up harness. Personally, i think it is time to invest in some good open barrel crimping pliers and some high quality connectors from someplace like Cycle Terminals. You are dealing with a lot of old wiring and old consumers, so anything you can do to reduce the load will be a good thing.

I know that staring at a wiring schematic can be pretty intimidating, but if you can focus on one circuit at a time, it is not as bad as it seems. You might be surprised how quickly you will get the hang of it, especially with the help of experts like Wookie58 and F64. They are more than willing to help and have probably forgotten more about this than most of us will ever know.

Ok, so that "open 12 volt terminal" thing had some tape over it which I presumed was to keep it isolated (obviously not ideal) so what do you suggest? Does that knob need to be covered? Like I said, didn't really know what I was looking at. 

I appreciate all the input. I'll be trying different things out and seeing what happens. I'm learning a lot (: 

Just wanted to say, I got the bike to start but I held open the throttle while I hit the ignition. Not ideal, but after that I adjust the idle knob and now she's humming along pretty much as regular. Still a slight hanging idle which has been there for a while and a little white smoke from under the engine but that's burned off now. She seems ok! But then the RPMs just dipped for a sec... Idle is definitely up n down a bit. Thoughts? 

RatRod1980 wrote:

Ok, so that "open 12 volt terminal" thing had some tape over it which I presumed was to keep it isolated (obviously not ideal) so what do you suggest? Does that knob need to be covered? Like I said, didn't really know what I was looking at. 

These rubber caps cover the terminals.