Starts, runs, shift into first, blow main fuse.

[dean_b]

My 81 gs850L is behaving as the title says. Bike will start up, rev and idle fine, apparently for as long as you like, until I go into first gear, when it will immediately blow the main fuse. Hopefully someone has seen this happen before and can point me in the right direction.

I assembled this bike about 3K miles ago (Aug 06), marrying a low mileage drive train with a mostly complete bike with a very sick engine. All electrical connections were cleaned and reconnected with dielectric grease. In addition, I installed everex rr, new glass mat battery, and replaced the entire ignition system including coils and wires with dyna. Battery checks out fine. Voltage meter indicates charging system working. Reconnected battery, relay, rr and ground connections - still blows! Bike has been golden up till now. Thanks in advance for any help.

[onchiman]

Sounds like it could be a dead short in the gear indicator switch. Is the only thing electrically that would change from neutral to 1st.

[Steve]

I tend to agree.

I could understand it dying if the coils were somehow connected to the neutral light, but that would not blow a fuse. :shock:


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[dean_b]

Thank you, guys. Your diagnosis was right on. The cable had been mangled at some point and was "fixed" with a nice layer of electrical tape. I missed that when I did the engine swap. Should be amazed that it worked as long as it did and waited till my driveway to fail. Good news is that I had a working spare on the original engine.