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My 88 FXSTC has been under the knife for about 2 years now and had a lot of work done to it and I'm ready to fire it up and ran into an electrical issue.
When I connect the POS cable to the battery then placed a volt meter between the NEG battery terminal and cable connector I get +12 volts on all 4 ignition switch positions. I'm pretty sure there should have only been voltage on 3 positions and no voltage should exist while in the off position.
Additionally the headlight doesn't appear to be getting voltage and there's no clicking or noise coming from the starter or solenoid. I do hear one of the circuit breakers under the dash randomly clicking
All the wiring is shored up & clean and I'm pretty sure its going to be a reversed wire on a component or circuit breaker.
Any ideas what could cause the voltage on all 4 ignition positions?
Disconnect the wires from the circuit breakers at the silver colored studs, leave those circuits out of the way for now.
Just hook up the wires between the ignition switch and the breakers (once that is all set you can connect the battery, and then connect your circuits one at a time and test them).
The wires from the posts on the ignition switch go to the copper studs on the circuit breakers.
Post A is where the power comes in to the switch, a tan wire runs from the main breaker (silver stud), up to the steering head, through the big connector and to post A.
There is also a jumper wire (Tan) between post A and post E.
Post B: Yellow wire to Lites breaker (Copper stud).
Post C: Brown wire to Ignition breaker (Copper stud).
There is also a jumper wire (Yellow) between posts B and C.
Post D: Red wire to accessory breaker (Copper stud).
Jumper wire (Red) between posts D and F.
When you are ready to connect the battery, connect it, don`t mess around with a voltmeter between the battery post and the battery cable terminal, just hook the battery cables up, positive first, then negative.
Now you can test the voltages at the ignition switch and the breakers. Once that part of the system is good you can connect one circuit breaker at a time (silver stud) and check each circuit out individually.
I`m very familiar with late `80s Softail wiring diagrams, I just went through a complete electrical inspection and repair on my `89, I probably could draw the wiring diagram from memory...
Last edited by Dan89FLSTC; Nov 5, 2020 at 05:43 PM.
Thats what I was thinking also.
Set your meter to amps to start, with your ignition off and the set-up you describes.
See what amps are showing on your meter, you can switch down to lower amps (like milliamps) if needed. You should have no more than about 50 milliamps showing on
the meter. If there's more than that, start by removing one fuse at at time until you get that reading. The fuse you removed should tell you where to look for the drain.
If your getting power back on the black with the ignition in the off position the ignition is shorted.
Which circuit breaker is tripping?
the 30 amp main
the aux.
the ignition
or the lights?
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1988 FXSTC electrical issue
