82 xs400 need help

[swascott1981]

Hi all I know there's threads bout this but I thought I'd start my own well here goes I have a 82 xs400 special and I bought the bike bout 2 years ago rode a couple days not far cause it had problems but it did wanna crank back then so I started painting it in the mean time I changed the controls but they were apperently European cause the wires don't match so I got those fixed so here's the problem.

OK so my bike has a fuse panel with 4 glass fuses and I think I have the wires right but besides that there is a inline fuse right at the front of the rear fender and every time I turn the key it blows the fuse.

Now I tracked down the fuse wires one goes to the front to the key ignition inside the headlight then its spliced to go to the starter relay coming off the battery and it goes to the Cdi box.

After checking all that I didn't find any breakage or shorts and I've been battling with the wiring for some time now .

Is there anyone having this problem with the inline fuse please help

 

[willem]

Hi and welcome. Sounds like you have a short somewhere which keeps blowing your main fuse. Go through the whole wiring and look for connectivity using a voltmeter (or whatever you call such a device for measuring electrics). Just keep at it, you'll find it eventually

Good luck!

 

[HoughMade]

Well, the 4 fuses in the fuse box are the only ones that are supposed to be there. If you have a fuse outside the box, someone's been into the wiring. Unfortunately, this is commons. People try to modify rather than get the wiring back in the condition the rather intelligent engineers intended. Since you had to change the controls and the wiring was not "plug and play" I'd start there.

Good luck!

 

[willem]

just be careful, if they put a fuse in and it's blowing, removing the fuse from the equation is NOT a fix it's probably there for a reason

 

[swascott1981]

Well earlier I tried another fuse and it started smoking down at my generated cover on the motor does that mean there's a short or a bad ground sorry I suck at doing wiring

 

[willem]

sounds like it yea. Definitely something shorting

 

[Scorpio1963]

Do you mean there was smoke coming out of the altenator cover?I realy hope not because your altenator is probaly toast.

 

[swascott1981]

Well the smoke was coming from the bottom of the engine and that's the only wires I know of

 

[Scorpio1963]

if the smoke came from inside the altenator cover there should be burn marks,inspect it.Also put your bike up on the center stand and look underneith.
Lok around the bottom of your frame just maybe it was only a wire going to relay that burned and nothing else.

 

[swascott1981]

I found out there's a wire that comes out of the alternator and it was completely broken touching the inside where the sprocket is.
Does anyone know the precise order of the wires that goes to the fuse panel the wiring diagrams aren't helping me

 

[swascott1981]

OK so I got the wire fixed and what I'm doing is using a piece of wire instead of that fuse so what I'm at right now is when I put the wire line the tag light and the brake light will work but if I take the wire out and put the fuse back in it won't do nothing