I'm stumped on electrical problem

[macmac]

Get a multimeter. You are going to need one and they cost about 17 bucks at walley world.

If you fry a regulator for no reason you will be sorry. Pull the ground terminal off and I mean way off the battery right now if it isn't, and put the key in your pocket or anywhere not in the ignition untill you find the dead short in the harness.

The hint here is to follow that lead from the regulator back to the key switch, looking at all the colors of wires you see at the regulator plug except any black with a yellow tracer which IS Ground.

Oh yeah pull the plug from that regulator too... One thing you can do is find out which wire and what color it is with the battery connected and with the key ON.. Set the meter to dead DCV, rthen red probe all the wires you see with the meter black wire jammed in the frame some where.

This may or not blow the fuse, and is why OHMS can be used to power up the wires.

Never ever power up the meter in bike volts when the meter is set to OHMS modes..

If you buy the yellow meter at wally world I bought one just like it for times like there so I can have the same tool you have....

Some how I don't think you will like buying the 3 batterys the book says to test with either...

I am sure no dealer tech will ever see any 3 batterys to use either.

I would bet good hard coin that less than 1/2 dealer techs can diagnose this charging system correctly the first 3 times in a row..

Tomm, thanks much for the manual pics, and you were right. When I bolted the regulator back up it popped the fuse. I got a used one off a wreck for $30 and put it on. Bike is almost all back together and had it running. Tomorrow I'll button everything back up and be done :)

Chuckster, thanks much for the phone calls and advise!

[ringadingh]

See what happens when a few good heads get together. Glad to hear you found the problem. ;)