ive bought a wk 125cc project bike because it was a silly price but i’m Confused on an electrical issue. the ignition was disconnected by the last owner and he just cut the two wires, he said it had stopped working. The guy added a new ignition barrel onto the side and wired it so the live was direct to the battery and the neutral was spliced into another wire in the loom. All good, turn the key and you get power then turn off the key and it keeps running until you hit the kill switch. Not a major issue however I saw that a live wire coming from the battery with an in-line fuse was blown. I replaced the fuse and the bike lit up with no key. It’s live with no key. I removed the ignition barrel and it’s still live. Any clues?
You need to use a meter set on continuity to find out which terminals come live at what key position. You should have one live up to the switch (fused), then the live feeds across the ignition terminals to send power to the engine ignition. So power in, turn key one position it should jump power across 2 terminals. When you turn the key to the steering lock position, all power should be off except the main fused one with no power showing at any other terminal. That will sort the ignition side out, but it may jump power across other adjacent terminals to power lights from the same second position. May be better to source the proper ignition barrel and block if you think the current one is a cheap add-on, that way you should have all the correct coloured wires for that loom, and it'll be easier to trace and replace.
Thanks but the issue is that the system is live with no ignition barrel?! The barrel wires have been cut so I have no key way yet everything is alive, somehow power is being supplied to all lights and ignition direct from the battery. I can only switch off by pulling the battery lead.
don't need a barrel for the bike to be alive, just pickup the relevant circuit running a live straight from the battery and anything will run. Take a look at the speedway bikes for instance, no keys. the previous owner sounds to have bodged it to run regardless of the ignition barrel being in use or not. Basically the ignition switch is just that, a switch. You need to fit a new ignition switch with the right amount of wires off it, whether that's a 4, 5 or 6 wire switch, into the loom picking up the right connections for that switch. Or grab a replacement loom and fit that. With the correct ignition switch.
Having looked at a few wiring diagrams I can see what you mean. I’ll retrace the original barrel back to where he has cut wires and try to undo his work. It seems he has probably just bypassed the switch like you say. Thanks
He has bypassed the barrel key ignition aka Hot wired. Hot wire means its always live like steve mentioned a speedway bike but think of it as a motocross bike, they have a hotwire fashion ignition its direct to the stator plate and coil so just the kick starts it and the kill switch just kills the live for a few moments to stall the motor so it wont keep running. we used to do the same on the old C90 hondas and likes removing all but the stator wires and hot wiring them to we had a constant hot connection. retrace the barrel connections to loom, mark em up with tape flags, source a new barrel for that bike, then rewire it in, you should find it goes right back to ignition only source
