Please help me troubleshoot electrical issue

Greetings, XJ owners!

My friend is looking for a motorcycle. My other friend/neighbor has a 1982 Maxim 650 he's getting rid of. Sounds like a match made in heaven!

All 3 of us (neighbor, friend, and me) went out today to take a look.

My neighbor parked the bike ~16 months ago. A year ago, when I asked him why he wasn't riding his bike, he mentioned that he was having an electrical issue. At the time, I believe I remember hearing that he'd tried jumpstarting the bike, and thought he might have crossed the wires on the jumper cables by mistake, and he hadn't been able to start it since then.

The battery has been inside for the last 16 months. When the neighbor invited us over, he put it on the trickle charger for ~90 minutes (so no guarantee that the battery is holding a charge, or that 90 minutes was enough to put much electricity into it). I brought my portable jumpstarter as well. I connected the negative terminal to the battery's negative terminal, and clipped a screwdriver into the positive clip of my jumpstarter and touched the screwdriver to the positive terminal of the battery.

Even with the questionable motorcycle battery and my known good jumpstarter working in parallel, we got NOTHING from the electrical system....no horn, no turn signals, no neutral light, no click of starter solenoid. Nothing.

I popped the lid off the fusebox and found it was wired for exactly one fuse. It looked like it was originally wired for 2 or 3 fuses, but those had been bypassed and new single-fuse inline fuse holders had been installed near the fusebox. One was labeled "headlight" and the other was labeled "turn signals". All 3 of the fuses looked OK to the naked eye (I didn't think to bring a voltmeter).

So...any thoughts? If he did actually hook up jumper cables backwards, what are the odds that he fried something? If he did fry something, what would it be? The electronic ignition module? The other finned thingy right beside it? (I'm guessing it's a rectifier). If either of those were blown, would I really have no signs of electricity at all? I was fully expecting to find some sort of main fuse or fusible link that had blown. In my experience, things like the horn are on a separate circuit from the engine, so even if the ignition module were blown, the neutral light, turn signals, horn etc should still work, right?

From reading a few posts here, it sounds like the fuse box is notoriously bad...perhaps that's a good place to start. Is there a main fuse somewhere I didn't see? Is the main fuse inside the fuse box?

Thank you,
Shane in Seattle
'78 XS750 triple
'88 Honda NT650 Hawk
etc, etc, etc....

 

The Walt Disney Production "All-in-one" is the most ridiculous wiring hack-job I have ever heard of in over 50 years of working on motorcycles.

That takes the cake.
"Dat foo kneeds ahbee slapped upside uh-viz head!"
"Git duh fugg odda 'ere wid dat shidt"

That's part and parcel of the problem ... huh?
Doan-cha think?
Get rid of that Mickey-Moused wiring and put-in a fuse panel.

If I had to pick three things to replace after hearing the details and the story you just presented ...

I'd probably order a Fuse Panel, New Ignition Switch and a Solenoid.

 

Your neighbor has a time bomb that went "poof" instead of "boom". If you don't see any of the wiring melted, odds are that the TCI box is fried (well done too) along with the voltage regulator. I would tell him you'll take $50 to remove the junk off of his porch/driveway, invest that $50 in a used set off of flea-bay, buy a maintenance manual and a fuse block (there are a few listed here on the forum that will serve), and fix that thing up right. In all reality, the single fuse (really bizarre and dangerous) coupled with a lack of knowledge just cost that poor bike about $500 or so in damaged parts. You can source good used units (about $100) at the afore mentioned flea-bay and get yourself or your buddy a nice runner. Looks like you have a nice stable of toys yourself and know a thing or two about what NOT to do to a bike. Do yourself and your friend a favor, unless you both are mechanically/electrically savy, pass on this one. If your up to the task, this bike should be had cheap (I wouldn't give more than $100 for it) and is a few weekends (assuming a few hours each Saturday) away from living again.

 

Thanks for the replies. I must not have been clear with my earlier post -- there are three fuses, as far as I can tell, but only one of them is in the original fusebox. The other two have been wired separately outside the fuse box with inline fuse holders. How many come on the stock bike -- 3 or 4ish? I'm not saying that all the wiring for the bike is running thru a single fuse -- I didn't trace the wiring to see if that was the case -- I'm saying that there was clearly a problem with the fusebox, and he'd had a shop work on it to fix that problem, and the way the shop fixed it was to reroute 2 of the fuses outside the box.

If I owned the bike, my first order of business would be to use a voltmeter to trace the electricity from the battery and see where it's stopping. My guess is that there's something not right in the fusebox area. The simplest solution is probably to put in a proper fusebox in lieu of the current setup. With that fixed, I'm guessing I should at least get a neutral light, horns, turn signal, etc. From there, it's easy enough to jump across the solenoid (if the solenoid is bad) to get the bike to crank over and check for spark. No spark? Bad ignition. No charge? Replace rectifier.

So, I'm guessing that the electronics on an '82 bike only control the spark, right? Even if the electronic module were blown (or removed), I'd still get a neutral light, horn, etc, correct?

Thank you,
Shane

 

Yep ...

That's why I suspect the Ignition wiring or Switch.

 

Ok, sorry for the missunderstanding. It is a bit of a relief to hear that the original fuses had been swapped out for external fuse holders. This in itself is not a bad thing, provided they were installed correctly and are of the correct amperage rating (30A main, 10A for the remaining three). There is a thread on the XJ mod forum that has a picture of the wiring colors for the fuse box. You might want to check it out.
I would get my trusty multimeter out and check for continuity for all the major players in the ignition game before I put out any money on this bike. Ensure the solenoid primary winding is still intact, continuity through the ignition switch back to the solenoid, etc.
Your presumption on the electronics controling only the ignition is correct. You should get all the other indicators even if the TCI is shot.
All in all, I still wouldn't give more than $100 for a non-running bike unless it was clean as a whistle and had new tires on it. 2 cents FWIW.

 

Correction on the thread post. Its here on the XJ chat page "fuse box questions" by TaZMaNiaK.
Good stuff if your looking to put your fuse box right.

 

If you dont have a meter, just replace the fuses for starters, they are cheap enough. Then you are going to need a meter or a test light if you still have problems.

I picked up a '79 XS750 that the PO could not get to turn over or fire for next to nothing. After looking at what appeared to be perfectly good fuses, I replaced them all and everything came up...

 

are you on the motor stand and not the side stand? I had a simular problem and that is what it was.