Wiring Demons!

[JasonEllis]

Can anyone help me? I got a 1980 GS1000G. The wires from my pick up to my igniter and from my igniter to coils keep burning out. I have replaced the wires with 10ga, and still have problems. Just not as often. How do I fix this? I've looked at the ignition upgrades as a possibillity. My ignition is all stock.

[chef1366]

Sounds like your ignition isn't grounded. Find the ground to the igniter and ground it.

[JasonEllis]

I have added five grounds to the bike. And I have grounded the ignition and charging system and lighting directly to the battery. And I upgraded the charging and ignition wires to 10ga.

[JasonEllis]

I have tested coils, igniter and pick up. All good. I even checked voltage drops and voltage increase on each curcuit And I still scratch my head.

[posplayr]

I have added five grounds to the bike. And I have grounded the ignition and charging system and lighting directly to the battery. And I upgraded the charging and ignition wires to 10ga.

It sounds like you have a made alot of modification so I can't say for sure, but because you have excess current running from the ignitor to the breaker plate you have a grounding problem.

Normally the breaker plate only puts out small magnetically induced pulses which the igniter uses to short the coils in the required order. There is no way under normal operation those wire should get hot. However, if that path is the only way for current to return to the R/R (-) then this picture is starting to make sense.

You said you ran all grounds back to the battery (-) right?

This is likely your self inflicted problem and it is not a gremlin .

Please read the next sentence carefully:

" All charging current exiting the R/R (+) Red lead must return to the R/R (-) Black lead ".

In the simplest of terms what goes out must return otherwise there is not a complete circuit. Charging current does NOT return to the BATTERY(-); it has to get back to R/R(-)

I have mentioned this here many times (the Suzuki manual says the same thing) and there is a very common mis perception. The only currents that need to return to the battery are the currents that the battery generates.

If the R/R is generating power (like to the lights when running down the road) then that current has to get back to the R/R (-). Unless you are discharging your battery all current associated with electrical load consumed by your motorcycle (outside of the stator) has to return to the R/R (-).

Since you have wired everything back to the battery ask your self how does the current get back to the R/R (-)???

How is your R/R (-) even grounded? (see my single point ground description at the mounting bolt).

It has to get back some way otherwise your bike will not charge. So it is finding a sneak path.

Based on the above, I'm guessing you have forced all charging current in your system to return from a common point at the battery (-) back to the igniter through its "ground" which goes to the pickup which somehow has a ground path to the engine which somehow finds a sneak path back to the R/R (-). Again I don't know what you did with the R/R(-).

The simplest fix is to implement a single point ground at the R/R (-) using the mounting bolt.



The simple way to test is to run a fat wire between your collective grounds at battery (-) to the R/R (-). This might not solve all your problems because you might still have charging issues since you apparently tried to avoid using frame grounds which the GS already had. I would only do that as a quick check to see if the pickup wire stop getting hot.