What's this resistor for?

[makenzie71]

My Lifan-powered Hi-Bird 250cc ATV has a resistor plugged into the wiring harness...pale green wire/red stripe. Does anyone know what it's for?

[Weldangrind]

I can't imagine. Can you tell us what section of the harness? Got a pic?

[makenzie71]

It's either neutral light or reverse light. I just bypassed it all together. I don't need lights.

Now I'm at a completely different issue. The wiring harnesses were all so chewed up and dodgy that the bike wasn't working right...ignition one moment but if the harness was wiggled it'd lose spark.

So I built a new harness. Simplified as much as possible. I removed the left hand control (no kill switch or start button or lights) and all the lighting and fan circuits. I just have the CDI, key ignition, R/R, starter and I wired in an independent start button. Only now I have no spark.

I'm concerned about one wire coming from the engine. I got one plug with three yellow (3-phase A/C stator leads), a black plug with various wires for the neutral and reverse lights and such, then I got three loose wires:

Black with red stripe (AC input, wired to CDI)

Blue with white stripe (ignition trigger, wired to CDI)

Green with white stripe...this is the one I'm confused about. It was wired to ground when I get the bike. Is it suppose to be ground?

Everything else is wired straight and easy. All grounds are wired directly to the negative battery terminal. The kill switch circuit has been completely removed for the time being (simple push button kill will suffice later).

Any suggestions?

[waynev]

It's either neutral light or reverse light. I just bypassed it all together. I don't need lights.



Well that makes sense then, it's probably a LED bulb for the R / N light and therefore the resistor is needed to keep the LED from burning out, i have this on my GIO Beast too.

[makenzie71]

yup after I thought about it for a while I realized that the resistor was on the same circuitry as the reverse and neutral lights...and they're LED's. It was obvious but I didn't make the connection very quickly lol.

Right now I've got it sorted that teh green w/white stripe wire is ground. But I'm still having spark issues. the same ones as before. So now I have a nice, beefy, and and easily diagnosable wiring harness that didn't solve my problem.

I'm pretty sure at this point that my problem is my CDI. I've got voltage going to it, but nothing coming out. It's rpetty random when I do have spark...makes it look like if I wiggle the harness everything works. Not really the case. I'm going to see if I can get another one locally tomorrow, and maybe a stator.

Out of curiosity, wouldn't the CDI from one of the smaller horizontal Lifan engines work if wired in? I tried that and got no spark there either.

[waynev]

I'd check all your kill switch wires and make sure the switches aren't bad or that a wire isn't grounding out somewhere, also make sure that your actually using a good spark plug like a true NGK not the crappers that come with them, ie. got a new GIO 140cc dirt bike, kicked it over tons of times and it wouldn't start at all, put a new NGK in it and it started first kick, funny thing was the plug that came in it said NGK on it but i think these are not true NGK's.

[makenzie71]

There are no kill switches or kill grounds and I'm checking for discharge at the coil, not a wire or plug.

[waynev]

There are no kill switches or kill grounds and I'm checking for discharge at the coil, not a wire or plug.

Oh, so you have no kill switch or no ignition switch?

EDIT, oh ok i re-read your above post about the new wiring harness, now you say all grounds goto the battery, do you also have ground lead from the battery to the frame?

[makenzie71]

By ignition switch you mean?

There's no kill circuit.

[waynev]

By ignition switch you mean?

There's no kill circuit.

I meant a key ignition switch as you will get no spark if it is not wired correctly.

I found these for a lifan 250cc might be close to what you have http://www.lifanenginepartswholesale.com/popup_image.php?pID=10425
http://www.lifanenginepartswholesale.com/popup_image.php?pID=10426

[makenzie71]

The keyed switch only activates the starter button and lights, and deactivates a continuous kill circuit. Everything else stays live, so with no kill circuit and an independent starter circuit there's nothing to wire incorrectly...you don't even need the key switch. The way this thing wired from the factory you could get it to run by unplugging the key switch and jumping the start terminals.

It is wired in, though, and correctly.

Both of those schematics (thanks, btw) show all three wires going to the CDI...but there's no place for it there. My CDI was wired like this:

http://i397.photobucket.com/albums/pp60/LynnEdwards_photo/CDI_Pinout.jpg

The only place for teh Green w/White Stripe wire to go would be one of the two grounds...which technically it is anyway (CDI and Green w/White Stripe are both tethered to the neg. battery terminal).

[makenzie71]

After doing some checking I have found that I have no continuity between my blue w/white stripe lead (pick up) and ground. I've read that there should be some continuity here. I checked the pick up on my 110cc four wheeler and there's continuity (263ohms) to ground.

Does this mean bad pick-up?

[makenzie71]

And then, this morning, after pounding on the thing with an impact driver trying to get the screws that hole it in loose, the pick up now has continuity to the ground wire, but still not to ground.

[Weldangrind]

That makes me wonder if the ground strap from the negative battery post to the frame needs to be replaced. Weird stuff happens in cars without adequate ground straps, and I'm guessing that the same logic applies with bikes.

I once heard of a clutch cable in a car that was periodically breaking, with no apparent reason why. The mechanics at the local shop kept replacing the cable without troubleshooting the reason. It turned out that there were no ground straps, so the ground circuit was being completed by the cable.

[makenzie71]

Good ground. New, actually. I've run grounds from the negative terminal directly to the start switch, R/R, CDI, and pick up coil...then a 10g ground directly to the frame.

[makenzie71]

I got my new CDI today, but it wasn't EXACTLY the same. It has a the same plugs, but also an additional red wire just dangling from the sealant on the bottom. I tried running this and got no spark...so I ran the red wire to the positive battery terminal and got nice pretty spark.