electrical woes

[bunbun]

alright, so knew there was something up with electrical when scooter lost power in the rain. has been fine. started having trouble starting like a week ago, then just stopped altogether.

engine cranks but won't start.

checked for spark & is none. replaced spark plug / ignition coil / cdi earlier just for fun i guess?

just also replaced solenoid as power was not getting across it. good news is now power does go through it, same issue though.

also my battery drains 100% immediately on hitting the starter.

so there's a short and i guess i've traced it to between the solenoid and the starter motor?

will investigate the wiring there later but any input is welcome (like odds of it being the starter motor itself should be 0, yeah?). have the body mostly apart but trying to do this with as little testing as possible as i don't want to be out there for more than ~6 more hours trying to figure out which shitty chinese wires / harnesses are the shittiest.

should add that headlights, turn signals, brake lights all work fine. it's just the second i hit that starter the battery goes from 100% to 0% & things go wonky.

also battery sits at like 13v, trying to start brings it down to ~6v afterwards and needs to be charged for a bit and left to sit before i try starting again. starting to worry it might explode, a little.

[bunbun]

yeah, so the battery i've been testing with is leaking battery acid, imagine that.

i got it to drain the battery with the solenoid disconnected and just mashing on the starter, so. god knows where the short is.

is there a specific reason i can't just install my own switch on the solenoid and bypass actually having to sort this, at least for now? seems simpler than redoing the entire starting wiring + replacing the starter switch just to hope that works.

[bunbun]

okay so testing battery was also bad. now have a spark & got it to start, thanks me!