Ignition problems after coolant change?

Waahson said:

Yeah that makes sense. I guess I just don't like the idea of an exposed wire being in my bike, even if it's not hot. A lack of knowledge is making me a bit timid, and electricity makes me nervous. I'd turn the bike off and take the keys out before touching anything metal when looking at the fuses, but my grandfather had his hands all over the frame and around the battery when troubleshooting.

I don't like being shocked haha. I'm a bit of a cautious individual.

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Easiest way of not getting shocked is not to work with live wires. Also 12v really can't kill you unless you're really trying.
As far as exposed wires on the bike the thing is that when you have a short that is a result of an exposed wire. Whether between two wires or the shorted wire to ground. You can also wrap the wire up with electrical tape and it'd be pretty much as good as new.
Electricity is honestly pretty easy. Supply(positive 12v from the battery), load(anything being run; starter motor, lights, computer, etc), ground(path back to the battery, negative) with some wire bringing it all together.
Your short is electricity finding a shorter path to ground. The shorter path is letting more electricity though than what the load would take, causing the blown fuse.
If you look at the wiring diagram for the ex (or anything really) it looks like a bunch of lines going everywhere, but it's just a map. Put a map of my city in front of me in the way circuits are laid out it'd take me a minute to figure it out.
I like this kind of stuff and if I had my hands on it I'd be having a blast. This does seem like a textbook way of getting your feet wet for electrical diag.
Take a look at the wiring diagram and a chart of common symbols (https://www.freeasestudyguides.com/graphics/electrical-symbols.png), figure out where in the diagram your problem is and chase it from there.
The only thing you have to lose is time. If you think learning electrical diag is worth your time jump in. If not, wiring harnesses are available. Absolute worst case scenario you'd be replacing it anyway.

Alright, so here's what we discovered. The previous owner blew the ignition fuse and replaced it with the spare 30 amp. This caused the fuse box to burn really badly, and a wire to melt and become very exposed since the problem was never properly addressed.

Idk how I've managed to ride the bike without any electrical issues for the past few years, but here we are lol. We cut open a lot of the wrapping and the only thing that caught my grandfather's eye (other than the melted wire) was this junction:



He said it seems like a weird thing for Kawasaki to do, but that it looks like a factory crimp so it must be correct. He also didn't think the blue shrink wrap was factory at first, but since it was everywhere he decided that it also must be.

The wire that burnt up runs from the fuse box (Ign) to where it connects to the stop switch. The wire going into the stop switch isn't burnt. The current plan is to cut the wire on each end, attach a new one, then see if it still blows fuses or is still shorted. If either still happens and we can't fix it, then I'm tearing out the wiring harness and putting in a new one I just ordered, along with a new fuse box and petock (mine sorta broke). The bike is at 8.7k miles so I figure it's due for a valve adjustment, and if I'm going to be clearing room for that anyways, I'll just skip the troubleshooting and put a new harness in while I'm in the zone.

I asked my grandfather if the bike struggling to start but running perfectly could be a symptom of the ignition system having an issue like this, and he thinks it's likely the cause. The battery is new and never seemed like the issue when the bike was struggling to start, and there's no indication while riding that it's the carbs. I bought new spark plugs before this all happened thinking that could be it, so I'll be throwing those in as well.

I don't want to use the wrong words here, but I believe we're only running into one more issue. iirc, my grandfather said that the wire is shorted to ground no matter what we do to it, which he says shouldn't be the case. So he thinks that somewhere in the wrapping, the wire is exposed and burned itself into another one. We cut away as much wrapping as we could and couldn't find where that would be happening. The only burnt wire we found is the ignition wire. I asked him if that could mean the wire itself is just bad, and I think he was trying to say that the wire is bad because it's touching metal somewhere it's not supposed to be. So I guess we've found the victim, now we just need to find the culprit.

hi, your grandfather seems like a wise man and has the understanding of how the electricals work, it can be difficult for the novice (use the word sparingly) to unload the complexity of the systems into their brains, but breaking it down into simple individual circuits helps isolate where the issue is.
basically the source is always the battery (which is high capacity) and the electrical current runs around different circuits with varying amounts of power, each circuit having it's own unique power flow and usage. all works well while this current is under control.
but when a problem occurs like bad connection it causes the current to build up (if you like) and not flow as it should as the path is restricted this causes heat in that system. the more restriction the more heat to the point that system overloads this is where the fuses come in the wire in the fuse is very weak much weaker than the wires it connects to so if there is say a short the fuse wire heats up melts and cuts the power to that circuit it is protecting.

now to explain as simply as possible all the fuses in the fuse box are 10amp which is much lower than the wiring used in circuits which in general are rated at 16amp considering the battery is rated at 14amps there isn't normally a problem, but if you get a bad connection or short. the whole circuit heats up this causes the fuse to blow first.

the issue on your bike started a long time ago with some bad connection this started a cascade effect on the circuits causing the fuse (in that circuit) to blow and keep blowing while the issue was there. but the PO instead of troubleshooting the issue just replaced the fuse with a bigger one (which probably also blew) until the fuse used was bigger than the circuit it was made to protect.

so now there is no safety cut off point in that system, so instead of the fuse heating up and blowing the wires themselves heated up. day by day getting worse as the overhead wires caused more resistance and more heat to the point the insulation of the wires melted and caused a major short circuit. you are very lucky something in the system broke before causing fire.

on face value the only thing you can do is as your grandfather suggests replace the whole harness and the components on that system and start afresh, that fuse box also looks toast to me.
all because some clown put a 30amp fuse in instead of tracing why the 10 amp one kept blowing.