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Well, thought I'd post an update for everyone. I picked up the scooter from the 1st loser I took it to. He had ordered a replacement starter switch assembly, found out it was not wired the same as my old one and basically bailed on the job! The guy was basically not too knowledgable on electrical, and shouldn't have accepted the damn job in the 1st place if he couldn't handle it...

Anyway, I picked it up from the losers shop, and took it to the guy I had wanted to work on it in the 1st place ( but could never get in touch with him)! Dropped it off, and in 1 week he had it up and running! He used the switch the previous guy had purchased but figured out right away (i didn't even notice) that the hazards and kill switch were in reverse positions on the switch. There was apparently one extra wire also and all the wires were a different configuration. So long story short it was not plug and play. but he was able to get the new switch wired in correctly. He also cleaned the carb, adjusted fuel mix, adjusted idle, changed the oil, changed the coolant, and changed out a defective thermostat. On a side note: there was no other damaged wiring. The ignition switch wiring was fine. CDI was fine.

Since then, (last 3 weeks), I have put 450 miles on it. I also discovered the dreaded chinese valve stems were dry rotted just like my last scoot. Since this thing came with off road, J rated style tires that had a lot of road hum, and the rear tire was worn pretty badly.. yes with only 1000 miles on it.. I went ahead and had 2 new P-Rated tires put out on it along with the new valve stems.

Bottom line, it's running, and drivable and i'm loving it. I still have a possible cooling issue, but I will take that to a new thread. And though it defies reason, I will never hook up a charger to this scoot battery, while it is wired into the scoot.

The biggest thing that still bothers me? Neither I, nor my mechanic was able to find out what caused the battery charger to overcharge the system and cause burnt wires in the 1st place? He said it was the only case he has ever seen.

And for anyone wondering, I have not yet hooked the mirror blinkers back up as of yet, though i do have plans do do so in the future, after some more testing.

Hey guys, I'm in a rush to get to be on time tonight, so this may be a little short. I'll just recap a few things.

I added mirrors with led turn signals in them. I didn't upgrade to HD lights as Alley mistakenly mentioned. There's only led's in the mirrors, no bulbs, and i did no other add on's to the bike.

I do not believe the LED lights caused my issue. I believe the reason the battery needed to be charged is because I had the ignition turned on and off throughout the installation process, which was a few hours by the time I was finished. I simply think the battery was low due to having the lights on while testing during installation, and then taking a short ride at night that was not long enough to re-charge the battery fully. I also don't believe the original battery was in 100% operating condition to begin with due to the previous owner riding it maybe 2 times last season with no trickle charge ever used.

I could be totally wrong about the mirrors. But one thing I'm sure of, I just can't convince myself I wired the mirrors the wrong way. However if the mirrors caused a short, it could be due to internal wires inside the mirrors. you do have to be very careful during installation because you have to spin the mirrors which twists the wires internally. I was very aware of this during the install and don't think I twisted the wiring, but it's possible.

As far as how I wired them? I simply put both grounds to the same chassis screw under the front faring. While tapping the positive wires on both front blinkers with 3M T-Taps. The left mirror positive lead tapped into the left blinker positive wire. The right side done the same way.

You are right Rich, I don't have the money to throw around. I appreciate the fact that you remember that Normally I have the patience to stick with it. But when my buddy came over and we spent the entire day tearing this thing to the bone and not getting anywhere...except to look at these plastic parts all over ny garage, and 2 ziplock baggies full of fasteners... it's just tore me down mentally and I couldn't talk myself into messing with it anymore. Even although I had an idea of a problem after collecting my thoughts. Part of it is due to other things going on in my life at the moment. It was kind of the last straw sort thing. To top it all off, my wife got in an accident with her car that we just bought for her 6 months ago... for various reasons, we will not be able to get it repaired by the insurance company. So I spent yesterday using my tie down straps hooked to my tree doing some backyard body work..stretching the metal back out close to spec. She's good mechanically, but down the road i need a hood, fender and new bumper cover. good thing I took 2 years of autobody tech back in high school...lol. I surprised myself how good i got the crushed support members back into shape with my diy stretcher Anyway.. .that's another story..

The good news is my wife starts a new job tomorrow, making more $ than the job she got laid off from. I've been back to work to a temp to hire position for the past month... so financially I'm back on track to recovery.

Ok, to get back on track... here's what i know so far. The guy I took the scooter to sells and repairs chinese and other brand scooters and motorcycles. He's a one man shop and seemed top be very honest and knowledgable. He just happened to have A Jonway 250 on his rack when i stopped by. And had some Ice Bears sitting around also. That's the only reason I wanted to try him out. Although I would have rather fixed it myself with help from you guys, between my frustration and need to deal with other things in my life.. I could justify a 200.00 repair bill, just in gas savings alone, had I been able to drive it to work the last 3 weeks. Anyway while checking out the scooter myself, I did discover the wires to the kill switch were fused together. I separated and fixed what I could see. but still no spark. Got fed up and you know the rest of the story. The good news is, the shop contacted me today and he took the entire switch assembly out including the wiring harness and discovered there were melted wires further down, including the sheathing. an entire new switch assembly has been ordered and should be in this week. If i am very lucky, this will solve the issue. I did not discover any burnt wires anywhere else on the bike. If I am not so lucky, well.... I will be making a decision how to proceed from there.

The question remains... what caused the battery charger to overcharge the system and cause burnt wires in the 1st place?

So to the other poster with no spark issue, I would check the starter switch assembly and look for burnt wires....


If I am lucky enough to fix this bike, I will never charge the battery again while it's hooked to the scooter wiring. I know this should be a non issue, as i did it all the time on my previous scoot for 4 years with no problems. But if this one has some kind of issue, but charges and runs fine, I'll just charge the battery if need be, with the scooter unhooked.

I will also think long and hard before hooking up the led's in my mirrors.

Alley and Rich, you've been awesome, I appreciate all the help so far. I will keep this thread updated, hopefully with good news by the end of the week.

On another note, if the kill switch grounds the engine to kill it, then doesn't that in of itself create a short that could have caused my charger to overcharge the battery and cause all of this havoc in the first place? Do any of you worry about the position of that kill switch when charging your batteries?

I have the same scooter and my rear caliper makes a weird dragging noise. I only noticed it while rolling the bike when it's not running. Check that out. It's most likely the plastics though.

I found this video so far, but this is a smaller scooter, are they wired the same on these larger scooters?

scooterdoc.proboards.com/thread/9349/great-spark-video-tests

If she came with it, I'd let the scoot sit in the garage all summer

Ok, I removed the old melted fuse holder and installed a new inline mini ATM fuse holder. I then installed a new battery and purchased a new charger with floating capability. I don't think my old charger was bad, but I didn't want to risk damage to the new battery. The scooter was still dead, even the clock. After checking everything out I noticed the fuse had blown. I replaced the fuse and all seems to be ok. the scooter is once again cranking fine and i don't see any other wire damage. It won't start, but my buddy has agreed to come out and help me with the starting / idling issues, hopefully this weekend.

What's bothering me is the fact that I discovered whenever I hook the charger up to the battery while it is installed in the scooter, it, the fuse blows. What would cause this? Did I wire the led mirrors up incorrectly? My original plan was to tap both wires from the led mirror into both factory blinker wires (each blinker has two wires). When i did this the blinkers in the mirror would not work. To get them working correctly, I tapped only the positive lead into the factory blinkers, and grounded both of the negative leads directly to the chassis. Is this incorrect and causing my fuse blowing issue, and possibly my previous damage that occurred? I have a background in automotive electronics and this was common practice to ground audio equipment directly to the chassis. Is this a no no, on scooter electrical systems?