Been toying around with this little Suzuki for a few months, so far doing simple stuff, i.e. wheel bearings, tires, headlight, playing around with the stock seat pan, working on the carbs, etc. I haven't really done anything electrical, say for a battery replacement. Though now I guess I get to, haven't even ridden this thing yet.
Went to start the bike today to adjust the carbs some more, and it was turning over slower than usual. Smoke started pouring out from under the tank in the midst of this all, killed the key lifted the seat and started hunting for the smoke source. There appears to be a ground wire that runs front to rear on the bike, black with a white line, near the air box 2 jumpers come off it spliced into said wire, both seem to go to frame points. One was bolted to the battery box, the other to the front mounting point for the solenoid. Both of these jumper wires burned up and let all their magic smoke out, and as we all know, you let the magic smoke out of the wire and it don't work no more.
First thing I did was tear into the main harness praying the other wires were in tact, and prayers were answered, they didn't get fused together and the insulation appears perfectly intact. But these 2 ground leads burned clear up to their splice point, after that everything appears well.
Any idea what happened? My two thoughts were a.) the starter has had enough after 33 years of service and was drawing too much juice, and b.) one of these wires wasn't bolted to the correct location. As a side note no fuses blew, all correct ratings and such. Don't really care if the starter is done, no problem kicking such a tiny engine over.
Thanks for any advice, appreciate it
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