Tors Doohicky

[sredish]

That's just what I was thinking, thanks BenBB. Yeah, through the frame is supa fly.

[Meat]

no spark again. im very close to parting the whole quad and buyin a new yfz. yea, im pissed. Im sickin' of workin on this quad, I want to ride, not wrench. Plus I got a leaking radiator now. I have a spare radiator, but its just another problem I need to fix.

 

The quad fired right up today, took it for quick spin, got off and was checking the top end for any leaks, cause I just had the juggs off and thats when I noticed the radiator leaking. I found the leak, my front brake line wore a pinhole in the radiator and it was pushin out this hole. So I ride back to the house, turn the quad off and get my dad. I told my dad to blip the throttle while I look for the hole in the radiator, so I tired to start it and nothing happened. Kicked it another 10 times and it wouldnt fire up. Pulled a spark plug and found I had no spark. I check all my connectors, everything is plugged in. Tried a new spark plug but still NO spark. Its too damn hot to work on the bastard, plus im frustrated. Two weeks till CoalFest and I cant keep my quad running for more than five minutes. Pissed

[boonman]

Meat, it is surely a simple problem. Something that is overlooked. No spark. Rule it down to electrical. Ain't your silencer causing the problem!!!! Anyways, Start from the plug(s) and work back. Look at the entire harness VERY carefully. Look for any spots that could rub on the frame. Any wire that touches the frame, and you will ground it out. Pfft. No spark. I haven't even looked at my bike in 6 months. There haven't been pipes on it in forever. I will probably look at it 2 days before I leave for coalfest. I will come down a day early if you need some help still with it. I am taking Friday off, I can come down Thurs. night perhaps..... Check the harness...... It has to be there.

[Meat]

the harness is practically brand new, its from a '99 model and looked like it was in perfect shape when I put it on. The harness came with the CDI and coil and I bolted everything on. Had tons of spark. Put the quad back together yesterday\saturday and it fired right up. Ran it for about 15 minutes and it ran great, just like old times. Noticed leaking antifreeze dripping on my A-arms, took it home and turned it off. Dad was there, I told him to keep the quad running while I looked for the leaky radiator, dad has to work the throttle cause my idle is just a tad too low to keep the quad running(I need to adjust my idle screws). So I kick the bike and it starts right up, dad grabs the twist throttle and gives it some gas, im looking for the radiator leak, he lets the RPM's fall to idle and doesnt rev it back up, the engine dies becuase of the low idle, im yellin' at him to keep giving it gas. So the engine stalls, I hop back on it and expect it to fire right up again, I kick it once, twice, 10 times and it wont start. The engine is warm and it always starts on the first kick. So I pull the spark plug and find there's no spark. I put a new plug in the boot and kick it again, still no spark. So I take off the gas tank again, mind you its 90 degrees out and humid as africa, and I go over the harness. Everything is kosher. Everything is plugged in, the key wires are still spliced together, and the coil wires are on the coil. Fiddled and wiggled and kicked it and still no spark. Dad says sell it and get a YFZ. I was too hot and frustrated to work on it any longer yesterday. I just spent $300 on a complete electrical system, and I dont have any spark. I'll be out there workin on it later tonight.... i'll keep yas updated. Im not in a good mood, havent been in a good mood since my wiring problems started two weekends ago, iv put countless hours on this electrical system and couldnt get it too work, Coalfest is coming up fast, so I bit the bullet and bought a new harness, CDI, coil and 200 watt stator. Runs great for 15 minutes, and now im back to page one with no spark.

 

The quad really runs good, and up till now has been super reliable, I rode it almost every weekend last spring\summer\fall, from April till December and didnt have ONE SINGLE PROBLEM. This year I got about 6 good rides on it and then my ground wire broke off and I havent been able to ride for past three weekends. Im just frustrated at this point, its soooo damn hot out it makes it hard to work when the sweat is drippin' in your eyes and your dad's tellin' you to sell it.

 

On a good note, I finished up my rear brake caliper project and tested it out when I rode it yesterday. Locked the back tires right up, worked like a champ. I finally have rear brakes again, it was kinda weird. Im using a 250r rear caliper and a custom rotor from QuickSand. Stan hooked me up with a shorty brake line, and thats workin' great. 14 inch brake line. whats the stock length ?? 23 inches ?? Its pretty trick, i'll shows ya at CoalFest.

 

denny

Edited May 23, 2004 by Meat

[Meat]

Update.

Nearly four hours of wiring work and I still NO sparkin'. I have spark sometimes, but not every kick, like every third kick. The spark is weak and itermitten. I checked the pickup coil gap and have it set to .020 like ricky stator says. I took all the loom and electrical tape off the wiring and couldnt find anything broken or messed up. Im going to start cuttin off useless connectors later tonight. I still want to run the factory handlebar on\off switch\light switch.

 

Its getting real close to coalfest's dates and we have alot of work to do getting camp ready, getting directions, hangin trail markers, etc etc... and I cant get my Banshee to run.

 

Im seriously thinking about parting the whole Banshee out..... and buyin' a new yfz. Its got me that bummed out.

 

side note, got my leaky radiator replaced with a spare one I had. Found my front brake line wore a hole in the bottom of the radiator. Glad I found that now and not at Coalfest.

[boonman]

Denny, it sounds like a broken ground. Perhaps a coil wire that has fallen off? (primary side. the orange and black wires) Intermittent electrical shit is really to diagnose.... There isn't much to making a banshee run... Are all the connectors clean? What DIDN'T you change when you changed the harness/CDI/and coil. That connector where the key used to be needs to be soldered together..... And the stock handlebar bullshit, is just plain useless. I have a mini toggle switch zip tied to the handlebars for the headlights. I run a pro-design tether for a kill. I still have to hook up an MX kill switch. Other than that, my electrical is simple. I design electrical systems and shit at work. It's nothing tough. You have to go over everything. A ground that is not solid will f*ck up your day.... Just hadanother thought. What kind of plug caps are you running? Are they "loaded"?? What kind of plugs? I ALWAYS run "R" style plugs. You need a resistor in the shee electrical side of the plugs...

Edited May 24, 2004 by boonman

[bigboybanshee]

This really sounds a lot like the problem I'm having right now. One minute running like a scalded beast, next minute absolutley nothing. Me thinks I need to check my wiring If you figure it out Meat, be sure to let us know!!! DON'T SELL IT!!!!

[Blacksmith]

A weak spark that will not start the bike is usually tracked back to a switch problem. If you turn the key off on a shee and then kick it over you will sometimes see a small or weak spark. I say all this because I think that you need to look at that connection and splice again. If you did your splicing "uphill" from the plugin, then check them both again. Remember that there are two wires going into the plugin from the harness and 4 from the plugin to the switch. Make sure that the correct two are spliced together and that the plugin itself is properly connected. I would also take an ohm meter to the stator and coil, but I suspect that they will check out ok.

If after you have done all of the above, and the bike still will not start, open up your handlebar mounted kill/light switch. Make sure that both of the wires going to the kill switch are still connected, I have seen a couple of these break and cause a short. If they are in good shape use the ohm meter to check for a circut between the frame and the black/white wire while the switch is set to run. If the circut is closed it is the same as having the kill switch set to off and tells you that you have a short in the wire at some point.

If after all of this the bike still does not start, well, we will simply have to start somewhere else

[Pjw350]

hey meat- i read about your post but didnt read everything. I saw you said that you dont have an on/off switch. Well my banshee would run real strong then die suddenly and then would lose spark. It did this for a few weeks and i was pissed. I rewired all the connections and then took it out to the badlands for a day and i get there and it dies. Well i took the on/off switch off and sprayed it with wd40 and she ran awesome for the rest of the day. I bought a new on/off switch from broke and I havent had it die on me since.

 

Do you pressure wash your banshee or run through alot of water. Maybe you need to put some of that dielectric grease on your connections. Just a thought

Hope you get that sumbitch runnin soon.

[broke]

Meat,

This is just a thought. I had a problem like that when I was building the RZ. It screwed with me enough I almost took a hammer to the quad. By the time it was all said and done it turned out to be a ground that worked about 97% of the time.

 

What I ended up doing for the nightmare of an electrical system is made a master ground. I have a ground wire that ties into the front and the back of the frame that I made sure was grounded well. I then took all the components that had seperate grounds and soldered the ground wire from the component to the master ground.

 

I then didn't have to worry about the iffy grounding anymore. I am now able to track any grounding issues back to 2 points and I have a back up if the wire happens to break free at any point. No matter what breaks or what's loose, I know that it's always grounded.

 

If you think it is an electrical component, I have a complete 99 electrical system sitting here you are welcome to try any part of.

 

 

 

 

Good luck, broke

[J..J.]

Hope you're not planning any trips soon, if my memory serves me correctly you made a complete balls up of the last wiring job

 

Hope I didn't jinx you man...

 

First of all, don't sell it!

 

I'm not anywhere near my quad at the moment, but looking at the diagram you posted in the in the beginning of the thread, it's quite a bit different to the original.

 

The most important difference I noticed is the ground wire from the coil, this should be seperate from all the other ground wires in my opinion.

 

If you still have the multi connectors from the old harnass lying around, I would make a temporary harnass outside of the frame, running just the bare essentials to fault find. Leave about 2 inches of slack on the connectors and cut the rest away.

Connect fresh wires outside the frame as follows:

(Leave the other harnass in place.)

 

The w/r & w/g, wire from the pickup coil to the CDI.

The r & g wire from the stator to the CDI.

The r/b and b/w from the cdi are used to kill the engine by grounding, so make sure these are not connected to anything.

The orange wire from the cdi to the coil primary.

The black earth wire from the coil primary to a good ground connection. (The terminal on the coil is marked for ground, I think, so make sure you've got this on the correct terminal)

The HT leads to the plugs, make sure these are good, include the caps in your check.

 

 

All this should only take 1/2 hour or so, you only need those 6 wires to make her run. Other things to check: Pick-up coil resistance, w/r & w/g. Can't remember what it should be.

Stator you've got covered.

New plugs correctly gapped, the little screw on connector screwed on tight.

CDI you've got covered, wouldn't hurt to try the old one again.

P/U Coil gap you've got covered.

 

The main suspects in my opinion are the r/b and b/w wire are grounding somewhere, either thru a faulty switch or insulation break down.

The black ground wire from the coil, this should be as short as possible with a good ground.

 

Just hang in there, make sure there are a few cold ones handy and keep at it!

[Meat]

thanks for all the replies, im going out to work on it as soon as I get done typing. I do NOT have a key switch or an on\off switch on the bike, but I have an on\off switch coming in the mail any day now. I want to run the on\off switch\headlight switch.

 

Can I just cut off those plugs going to the carbs ?

 

I have the wires going to the key switch spliced together, the previous owner of the wiring harness had cut the wires just before the connector. I removed the connector and twisted the wires together. It was sparkin' like crazy before. It just stopped out the clear blue.

 

I took all the factory loom off and im down to bare wires right now, I dont see any damaged wires or anything wrong at all.

 

What is the pickup coil gap supposed to be ? ricky stator's directions say .015 to .020, but I don't have any feeler gauges that thin, so I just used what I had, which is a .15 and .20, I also used the matchbook cover trick I read about, a match book cover is around .18 thick. I tried adjusting the pickup coil as close to the flywheel pickup as I could get it without it hitting the flywheel and that didnt help, I then moved the pickup coil back to .20 and that didn't make any difference either.

 

I'll pay top dollar, right now to anyone who can make me a custom "race" wiring harness, with '99 stlye plugs. I dont want to splice or solder or use connectors, I need to just plug things in. I dont want to deal with this problem any longer, its only 100 degrees out and humid as hell, not the best weather to be workin' on electrical bugs.

[J..J.]

I have the wires going to the key switch spliced together

 

I am sure that is your problem, break that connection and try again.

As explained before, the way kill switches stop the engine is by grounding the circuit.

[351w]

i hate to burst your bubble, i could have it running in a day or 2 tops.

next time get some of them soupies out and spend some of your damn money on a case of beer and i'm there !

haha

if you cant get it maybe if you are nice to me i' will take a trip over to shamokin and hook it all up for ya.

if your gunna screw with electrical things you need to have the tools to test them out.

you have to start at one end or another and go through the whole thing.

i would start at the stator and make sure you are getting a signal to the cdi and so on !

i have a couple different meters and testers that work wonders on electrical gremlins.

Edited May 25, 2004 by 351w

[boonman]

Denny, if you don't have it fixed by the Friday of Coal fest, I will com down Thurs. after work. I am thinking it is an overlooked problem.... Something is going all to hell with the kill switch business..... Why do you want a factory kill switch? They are junk.....