850 wiring harness

[Johnny K]

My sig is my bike. 3 years ago I bought and basically replaced every thing on my bike from piston rings, everything electronically and so forth. After recently buying a new dyna s ignition, dyna wires and dyna coils my bike ran awesome then all of a sudden died. Kind of a long story, but after I decided to unwrap the electrical tape off of the wiring harness I have found so many soldering joints that have made me go crazy. It was from the last owner. I blew up a wiring diagram on a cork board and can tell the color of the wires and where they go. However, when it comes to electrical diagrams I am really stumped as to where the wires connect with other ones and how many wires should be connected together and where they go from there. To top it all off, I am looking at the wires off the diagram to my bike and I am going around in circles trying to chase where each wire goes to. I have the 1982 GS850GZ diagram but when looking at my wires and comparing it to the wiring diagram it doesn't match up and my wires are just a mess with solder joints and a couple of wires that don't connect to other wires. I am in desperate need to figure this out. I would pay money as well to see if I can buy a wiring harness. To go the other route and try to re do the harness almost seems that I would never be able to do it. I am just in a huge slump and I don't know what to do.

[Johnny K]

pics of my bike

[Johnny K]

video of my bike

This was taken a month ago when it had the new dyna ignition, coil and wires. Now it won't start and when jumped it would run absolutely horrible and then it would die after 15 seconds and then when trying to start it again, the battery would be completely dead.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mow0E7tTac0

[bobthebiker88]

when a PO has ghetto rigged wiring all ove the place, or even modified it a lot, I consider attempting to correct the issue pointless, and simply replace the wire harness with an unmodified one. The list of what could be your issue may take you until your death to actually find, and even then be unsolved.

[tom203]

when a PO has ghetto rigged wiring all ove the place, or even modified it a lot, I consider attempting to correct the issue pointless, and simply replace the wire harness with an unmodified one. The list of what could be your issue may take you until your death to actually find, and even then be unsolved.

Yes, this is the straightforward solution, Johnny K. If you felt comfortable playing with electrics, you could bypass your harness mess and jump ignition with other wires,just to determine if your dyna ignition is working correctly. But your harness is a disaster. Winter's coming even to Hanover ( I lived in DeLuxbury for years ! ), so start scanning ebay for a suitable replacement. It's a nice looking bike, so fix it right!

[850 Combat]

If the soldered wires are the ones from the stator, that is a good thing. If the extra wires are the ones going to and from the left handlebar switch to and from the ftator / R/R area, that is also a good thing. You say that when you jump it, it runs for 15 seconds and it won't hold a charge. You did not mention if there is spark or not, but if it runs for even 1 second, there is.

You do say that the wiring worked for three years though. Why do you know that the wiring harness is causing your problems now?

Why not try to figure out why the bike doesn't run? Frankly, it sounds more like carbs and battery than wiring harness to me, because you say that it fires when you jump it (Which you should not have to do),

Used harnesses are not usually all that expensive, I just bought a GS 850 one for 25 bucks just to get spare turn signal and ignition modules. that were with it.

Very nice looking bike, by the way. Its really cool. Were the pods and pipe on it when it was running well? Considering that it came with a perfectly adequate electronic ignition, why did you put the Dyna on it?

[posplayr]

If the soldered wires are the ones from the stator, that is a good thing. If the extra wires are the ones going to and from the left handlebar switch to and from the ftator / R/R area, that is also a good thing. You say that when you jump it, it runs for 15 seconds and it won't hold a charge. You did not mention if there is spark or not, but if it runs for even 1 second, there is.

You do say that the wiring worked for three years though. Why do you know that the wiring harness is causing your problems now?

Why not try to figure out why the bike doesn't run? Frankly, it sounds more like carbs and battery than wiring harness to me, because you say that it fires when you jump it (Which you should not have to do),

Used harnesses are not usually all that expensive, I just bought a GS 850 one for 25 bucks just to get spare turn signal and ignition modules. that were with it.

Very nice looking bike, by the way. Its really cool. Were the pods and pipe on it when it was running well? Considering that it came with a perfectly adequate electronic ignition, why did you put the Dyna on it?

I agree, some of those mods could be OK. Johnny K should post pics of the modifications done to the harness so we can see and evaluate. You should get a descent soldering iron, solder and shrink tubing to make any repairs. Also some dielectric grease after you clean other connections. I use navel jelly os other to clean the brass connections of corrosion before drying and applying the D grease.

A little open harness surgery might be needed but nothing too bad.

If there is anything non stock looking open it up and take some pics. And to get he bike to run only needs a small portion of the harness.

[tom203]

I quick scan of ebay produced a bunch of 850 harnesses less than fifty bucks- some looked like Hiroshima survivors, but some ok.

[Johnny K]

There is some light to my situation. I bought a used 82' 850GL wire harness on e-bay last night. The wiring to my bike has always been a cut/slice/crimp or solder here or there within that past 3 years. It has never been 100% electrically. I was always fiddling with a new stator/R&R or anything else including wiring. Prior to this last downfall, my bike was running real nice as I have a video of it. My first time I bought the dyna ignition/coils/wires I kept getting black and sooty 1st and 4th plugs. I was never satisfied because I had a new ignition/wires/coils. So when I pulled the plug wires from the coils the 1st and 4th wire were all black that fit into the coils. After that I just happened to notice that the ignition wire had been cut a tiny bit from a lay down on my driveway coming just out of the cover. When I sliced open the outer sleeve the white and black wire were basically just held onto by a couple strands of copper. So I soldered all 3 wires and shrink wrapped them. After a couple of rides, the same thing happened even though I switched the coils to see if they were at fault. They were not and I was fed up and just ordered a new ignition/wires/coil setup. The more closely I looked at how my wiring from the ignition to my coils went I started unraveling the electrical tape and then realized that a couple of wires were sort of mickey moused and some of them didn't go to anything else. I have basically replaced everything on this bike and now I am going to dig into the wiring system and try to figure out where the missing wires go to. I am going to take pictures. Hopefully the harness will be what I am looking for.

[tom203]

Yeah, it's amazing what some folks will do to cobble together the electric system. Now's your chance to fix it right. Some of those parts you replaced are probably good, so bear that in mind.

[Johnny K]

I am completely stumped. I thought it was the wiring, but I am not sure. When I finally started the bike it ran boggy as if the carbs had not been cleaned. I took them completely apart and sprayed every part with carb cleaner then with compressed air. It is the same horrible boggy noise that I have no idea why my bike is like this now. From beginning: I kept on thinking I was fixing a "sooty" problem on my plugs due to a charred spark plug connecting to the coil and inside as well. That lead me to the wire straight from the dyna S that was sliced a little and then decided to solder the 3 wires and still had the sooty spark plug, but my bike ran almost perfect and sounded awesome. So I ended up buying a new dyna S ignition, dyna wires and dyna coils. I statically timed 1-4 and 2-3 correctly. I did not replace any wires like I thought I was going to because when my bike was extremely boggy, I thought it was the carbs and didn't want to touch the wiring. But now my bike idles okay, sounds so bad and boggy no matter how much throttle you give it. If need be I would pay someone to come here and fix my bike because I am just stumped. Once it is fixed I will sell her too. Here is a video of what it sounds like.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtruxJ6xoFY

There is the other video in my profile on Sept of this year when she ran so nice n sweet