davefrombc

Sent you a pm Mech. I can help you get manuals into the forum.

On a 4 stroke engine the timing marks can line up on the top of the compression stroke or the exhaust stroke. As Mech says , it's possible you have them lined up on the exhaust stroke. Everything will line up but 180 degrees out of time .

Check the fuses for continuity. I've had ones that looked good but actually were open.

Double check the fuses and the terminal in the socket the red wire connects to You may need to replace that assembly if there is corrosion in the socket preventing proper contact

I confused you with the fellow with the Bear Tracker. . LOL. . He had a similar problem.. He was able to start his quad by turning the ignition on and jumpering the starter solenoid terminals or by pull starting it . . No power to the ignition switch. Running a wire from the battery to the ignition switch worked for him . Now all he has to do is trace the red wire back from his ignition switch to the battery to see where the trouble lies.

Trace the red wire back from the ignition switch to the battery to see if there is a break there or a bad connection. There is likely not a solenoid/ relay on that wire but just a break or bad connection at one end of the wire or the other.

OK. I hope that new to you harness does the trick . I'm surprised it ran when you turned the ignition switch on and pull started it with so much of the wiring damaged Take care , have fun .

+The corrosion is the most likely cause of the failure. Did you run a wire from the battery anode directly to the ignition switch? It should have allowed it to power up. Another fellow had a similar problem with his Yamaha Beartracker. Running the wire from the battery to the switch allowed everything to power up for him, You might get away with just replacing some plugs and sockets rather than the whole harness. It might be hard finding one for your quad .

The neutral safety switch only stops the starter from running . It does not stop anything else. With the motor off but ignition switch on lights would still work. I don't know how your tracer would work as I have never used one , but I thought they work on AC only rather than on AC and DC . It is not the neutral safety switch or any other safety switch killing the system. You have no power to the ignition switch. If running a wire directly to the red wire connection turns on the lights when switch is on it is the hot wire from battery to that switch , You then just need to physically trace that wire back from the switch to the battery

We won't see any 50F weather up here for at least a couple of months now. It's a warm day here if it gets into the low 30's now until mid February/ beginning of March. Climate here is equivalent to your Agricultural zone 4

Check for power at the red wire connection at the ignition switch. If none , run a test wire directly from the battery to the red wire connection at the ignition switch. When you have it connected you should have power on the system. Then check to see if you have that power back to the red wire at the plug at the start relay. If there is then you know the problem is right there. in that white plug or its socket. \

On the switch diagrams the O denotes the connected wires. For example n the ignition switch when off the black/yellow trace wires are connected, On and it's the red and orange and in the light position it is the red, orange and Gray wires . The red wire would be the one with the power. The others would show no voltage unless connected to the red. None of them go to ground. The red wire is "hot" the other wires go to the ignition to run the quad and to the lighting circuit. In the stop switch and the start switch push button when off the B/W and B/Y wires are connected, on run it's the O and O/W. The O would have power on it when the ignition is on and the red wire is connected to the Orange at the ignition switch. When you go to start the O/W wire also connects to the Y/G to give the spark and extra boos for starting. The only wire that is connected directly to the power is the red wire. The others all go to other circuits to connect power to them.

Try just going from battery to the red wire and see if it powers it up. If it does then see if a new connector will fix it . Connectors are a lot cheaper than relays

OK. The brown wire from the ignition switch goes to another block and from there to the rest of the system you should have power to that red wire at the switch. I'm pretty sure the red wire down at the starter relay is the other end of it and it is either broken or possibly corrosion in the connector is cutting off the power. Try running a wire directly from the B+ to the ignition switch. If that allows everything to turn on ans the starter to run on the start button you know the problem is in that wire or at the other end of it. When you have that new wire temporarily connected to the switch with the old red wire check to see if there is power to the red wire at the relay. If there is you know the problem is at the relay and either the relay or the connector is bad.

If you have the key switch on and jumper from the battery positive post to the red wire on that relay and the lights come on it is most likely the relay. The brown wire and the other two smaller wires at the key switch got to the other indicator lights. I was able to magnify your wiring diagram some and see the orange highlighted circuit is the key switch. I still can't see it well enough to make out the color coding. If there is a heavy red wire at the key switch it should be the power wire to the switch . Run a wire directly from the positive post of the battery to that connection and the key switch turned to run and you should have everything powered up. One thing I should mention and have just been assuming.... Is that white connector pushed all the way down into its socket and both those 30 amp fuses ok? It could be as simple as a bad connection there or blown fuse. Hopefully Tom will chime in here and either confirm my guesses or offer more insight on getting power to the key switch.

My guess is it is just the wiring or a solenoid delivering power to the ignition switch. You know the ignition switch is working because when it is on the quad and all lights work. Check your wiring diagram and work slowly . I would look at the relay you have circled with the red and blue. Try a jumper from the battery positive terminal to the red wire in the blue circle .. Just take a thin wire from the battery and with the key switch on poke the wire down into that terminal so it touches the brass end you can see on the wire . If that is in fact your main power wire you should see the lights light up . If that is the case then it is the starter solenoid / relay is a dual purpose one and the ignition power side of it is bad.

The red button you're stopping the motor with is a "kill switch" normally only used as an emergency stop on most quads. With the ignition switch on you should have head lights and all other indicator lights like the neutral light. The starter relay may be a double relay . Heavy red wire your main power, one wire to turn on the main power relay and the other the push button signal wire to pull in the starter. The CDI box must be ok since CDI is Capacitor Discharge Ignition. If it was bad the motor wouldn't run. The two connections circled in red should be the main wire from the battery and the wire going to the starter. I'm sorry I can't help beyond that. All I can do is make guesses from the information you've given me. One obvious question I should have asked. Does the quadrun with the key turned off and you jumper the solenoid to run the starter ? It shouldn't . If the quad only runs when the key is turned on and you jumper the solenoid to start it you know there is no power going through the key switch to run the machine . There is a disconnect from the battery to the system, it goes either through the ignition switch itself or through a relay controlled by the ignition switch.

The ignition switch is the keyed switch, not the starter button.. When you turn the key on you should get lights. The safety switches only stop the starter button from running the starter. Since you say there are no lights or anything else until you start the motor by jumpering the star solenoid and there is when the motor is running ,that tells me there is a disconnect between the battery and the quad. I take it you can stop the quad by turning the ignition switch off. Sorry I can't help on that diagram. It doesn't come up large and clear enough on my screen. When checking for power on a wire , yes , one lead goes to ground and the other to the probe on the wire you are checking. If your quad uses a master solenoid that the ignition switch turns on ,I would suspect it . If it does not have a master relay and the power for everything goes directly to the ignition switch then there must be a break somewhere in that wire .

I don't know if the ignition switch grounds to turn a main solenoid to power up the quad or if there is supposed to be power to the ignition switch. That you'd have to see from the wiring diagram. You are not getting power to the system s check to see if you have power to the ignition switch. My guess is there is supposed to be power to it and from the switch to the rest of the system since the quad runs when ignition is on and you jumper the start solenoid. Look for a broken wire to the ignition switch. There is an obvious disconnect between the battery and the system so it's either a broken wire or a bad master solenoid.

Huge batteries like those ones should be charged with a 10 amp or larger charger. Trickle chargers are only good for keeping one already fully charged topped up, and even then some require the larger trickle chargers because of internal leakage not noticeable on smaller batteries. You can "shock" those big batteries into taking a charge sometimes by hitting them with 24 or more volts DC. Connect two 12v batteries in series and then connecting to the terminals on the big dead one for a few seconds. It may knock a little sulphate off the cells and allow them to show enough voltage your trickle charger or bigger electronic charger will start up on it . Only hit the dead battery for a few seconds at a time and be sure to be where any acid that might boil out won't hurt anything..especially you. The best way to try to get them to take a charge though is with one of the old chargers that were basically just a transformer and rectifier. They don't sense the battery voltage, They just supply a constant voltage that at first will show nearly no charge rate until the battery has gained a little voltage back. As battery voltage rises the charge increases but when it is near the charge output voltage the rate drops again. Those old chargers don't shut off when the battery reaches full charged voltage . They will keep pumping current into the battery until it boils out or shorts. It's worth a try if you have the batteries there .. You may get lucky. Otherwise hopefully you have a recycler there that will pay you for their lead content. I took about a half dozen dead batteries of various sizes to a recycler here and walked out with over $100 in my pocket

If the batteries have been discharged to that point they are scrap. Even if you could trick them into taking a charge ( the old ferro/mechanical chargers would charge those batteries) they will never have any decent capacity , and in fact are very likely to develop shorted cells due to the plates shedding sulphates.

If the manufacturers are selling them with a warranty for the older machines , I would be pretty sure the ATV charging system is fine for the lithium batteries.. My own machine is 30 years old , and no I have not put a lithium battery in it. The weight difference is negligible over an AGM battery. The biggest advantage lithium batteries have over the Flooded batteries and the AGM ones is they can be left idle without needing to be on a maintainer for several months. Do that with a lead/acid battery and it's toast. However on newer machines that draw a trickle of current for the CPU in their electronics the lithium batteries need to be disconnected just as the lead/acid ones do to prevent over discharge. If they get them providing higher capacity in the same size cases as the AGMs and bring the prices down closer to the AGMs, I would get one just for the fact they don't need to sit on a maintainer when the ATV won't be run for an extended period. .Until then I'll stick to the AGMs myself.

That got me to do a search on " Lithium battery for ATV" and found that "Yes, there are several manufacturers offering them" Here's one https://dakotalithium.com/product-category/12v-lithium-batteries/ There are several more popped up on the search, but this one had the most polished website.

The only thing that will draw any appreciable power is the electric blanket. A quick search on them showed me ones that ran from a meager 4w to 60w. A 60w one would draw about 5 amps. That might be close to the output of some of the smaller quad's stators. Your stereo would likely draw between 1 amp at normal volume and maybe 2 amps cranked up. It would have to be a fairly powerful one to draw 5 amps at ridiculous volume settings. a 4w CB might draw about 2 amps at max. A legal output of 4w am or 12w SSB would only require about 0.3A at 100 % efficiency, so giving it 1 amp to power the transmitter should be more than enough. Stereo cranked, electric blanket on and transmitting on the CB all together would likely max out an older small quad's stator. Newer quad's generally have more output than the older ones . I've seen quotes of up to 35 amps for some of them . Most forums mention 15 to 25 amp output on ATV stators, so I can only guess that older small quads would likely have outputs of 5 to 10 amps and newer ones between 15 and 35 amps. At 10 amps output a stator would be delivering about 140 W to the system. Even at 5 amps there is 60 watts available to power everything and charge the battery. You really don't need a monster battery to deliver power for even the most heavily accessorized quads when the motor is running .

The thing is , a rig can be loaded with accessories-- stereos, lights, and whatever other accessory you can think of but they are not all running at the same time. A stereo radio draws very little current. Older high powered incandescent lights drew a lot of current, but new LED ones draw very little for the same output. For example a 100W incandescent lamp will pull nearly 10 amps while the same light output from a LED light will only pull about 1 amp or a little less. Rigs like my HAM radio HF transmitter draw up to 20 amps on transmit but that is only when key down. Receiving it draws no more than a music stereo. Even small ATV batteries easily regain the current used on transmit when the engine is running and the radio is in receive mode. The only time a vehicle needs a bigger alternator is when it is running high powered accessories constantly . Turn a 1000w stereo amp on and run it full blast or run a winch on your 4x4 for long periods and you need a bigger alternator and battery to power them, but listen to a normal radio or run an auxiliary LED light or hand warmers and the stock setup should handle it easily. It doesn't matter how big a battery you have, if the alternator can't put out enough current to recharge it while all the accessories are running at the same time. For normal operation and accessories usually found on an ATV, the stock battery is all that's needed.