Starter click-clacks and black fuel pump wire burns

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katquad

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Joined
Dec 20, 2009
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Ok, here's my problem I have a 2004 xb12r it was wrecked previously, whenever I try to start the bike the starter click-clacks really hard and barely turns the engine over, and then the black wire from the fuel pump starts to burn up(only while depressing start)after the black wire burns the starter will not spin so I have rewired the black wire multiple times with the same problem. The starter and battery is brand new.
 
You've got a short against your frame somewhere. Need to trace the wiring related to that black wire throughout the bike the best that you can. Where the wires go through the steering head is a well known spot.

Here's a good method to narrow down the search to a specific "area" though:

To ID the area of interest (after ruling out the obvious sources like bad/dead battery, kickstand switch, etc):

- Pull the negative terminal cable off of the battery.
- Set a multimeter to mA.
- Attach the neg. cable to one lead and touch the neg. terminal on the battery itself.
- If it reads 0, you don't have a short.
- If it's anything but 0 then you have a short somewhere. Now start pulling fuses from the block one at a time until the needle drops to 0. That'll narrow it down.
 
There is something else I would try as well - the fuel pump ground wire is connected to the bracket that holds the electric pump and inline filter. I can't recall if this has a direct electrical connection to the base of the pump assembly but I assume it does.
If you have a poor high current ground for the starter motor (eg when the bike was repaired was the bit where the sub-frame connects to the frame painted or allowed to get corroded etc)?
I'm guessing that the frame could be connected to the fuel pump body via the mounting bolts and then in turn, the fuel pump ground probably goes to one of the grounding points on the sub-frame.
If so, this small wire would smoke with the current draw of the starter motor and the starter motor would only work in machine gun mode without a decent current flow.
The starter motor gets a ground via the earth lead across the upper engine tie bar to the main frame and then via the bare metal frame / sub-frame join. If you run a heavy duty wire (a car jumper lead will do to prove the point) from the battery negative to the earth lead on the upper tie-bar (any good electrical point on the engine - head , barrel etc) then with your fuel pump wire repaired yet again the starter should behave differently.

Of course this could be complete speculation but it would be straight-forward to eliminate. I'm also basing my electrical wiring guesses on how the 06 & 07 12X's are wired so hopefully they are similar enough for the theory to hold. [confused]
 
Thanks Rays!! I haven"t fully put the bike back together so the ground wire was unhook. I used jumper cables in place of the ground and the motor turns strong now.
 

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