1985 kawasaki bayou Help!

[the bayou]

Well i have the ignition hooked up on my 1985 bayou 185cc and i hook up the 12v wire to the ignition from the battery and turn the key the battery bubbles the white 12v wire to the ignition was smoking and sparking So i yanked it out of the battery and it stops doing it. Well I am thinking what you are thinking there is a wire grounding out somewhere! I put the multimeter on the setting that you can test to see if somthing is the same wire and of course the ACC the IGN are grounding out I have inspected the wires and noticed that the yellowwire with a red stripe is melted and is exposed all over the same with the black with a yellow stripe. my two questions are do I need to get a new wiring harness? and my final question on the sarter selnoid when I check the voltage going in there is 12V but nothing coming out the other side does this mean my starter selnoid is bad? and could this cause the grounding out?

[the bayou]

Anybody? Some one told me kawasaki does some weird things with wiring just needing some help.

[Kyforeman]

In regards to your solenoid, you will only have voltage on the main battery lug until you hit your start button, which in turn will bring voltage to the other side. I haven't seen a 185 in years so i cant remember exactly how many wire are on them. 3 or 4 i would guess. If the solenoid is bad it could ground out like you were thinking,but some solenoids work by grounding as that makes the contact between battery and starter. As for your question about your harness, that depends on how bad it is and how much you are able to troubleshoot it. You could probably find a good used harness for it fairly easy on ebay or one of the other boards

[the bayou]

Is there any way to test the starter solenoid or would I just use the multi meter and push the sart button to see if there is voltage coming out of the other side????

[Kyforeman]

You can check it with a multimeter either with voltage or continuity. It would be better to check with voltage as it could check out ok with just continuity and still be bad. other that the main bat. terminal and the one going to the starter how many terminals does it have? if it only has one other then you could apply 12 volts to that and it should then have 12 volts going to the starter. If not then its most likely bad. As i said earlier some solenoids do have to be grounded to work. If it bolts on ,then most likey its that type. If it just sets in a rubber mount or is isolated somehow it dont have to be grounded.

[the bayou]

it was held on by a little rubber mount! I will let you know about the starter solenoid later. my other question is underneath the seat there is a round metl relay that is rusted could that be causing every thing to ground out? check out my Pics to see the relay that is rusted tell me what you think. they call it a "RELAY-ASSY" not sure what that means

[the bayou]

After speaking with a locaol mechanic he thinks it might be the ignition switch wired incorrectly now my question is does anyone know which wire is which there is a yellow W/red strip, A white, BlackW/yellow stripe, and a brown.

[FordFan]

I would like to know the same thing. I'm just going to install a push button once I figure out what wire does what and how to hook it up.

[FordFan]

Ok I got my bayou running. The white and brown wires connect them and you will have lights,fuel pump. The other 2 wires are to kill the engine but your kill switch will still kill as well on your left handle. So what I did was I just wired a on / off switch since I have no key for the ignition. Also make sure that the spark wire has a good conection and no splices. I had to replace my spark wire with a lawn mower plug wire that I had laying around and works great. The yellow w red and the blackw white I just capped off I did not need it since the kill switch worked on the left bar.