ZN1300 Main Switch Mod

		ZN1300 Main Switch

Last Update 8/22/08

This page shows how to install an electrical cutoff switch on your Kawasaki Voyager 1300. I don't know about the ZG models, but the older Z1300 and KZ1300 models had a main electrical cutoff switch built in to the seat lock. When you opened your seat it would automatically shut off all the electrical power to everything on the bike, because the seat lock was also an electrical master switch for the bike. You could close the seat but that didn't turn the electrical system back on. You had to put the key in and turn it clockwise back to the 'Run' position.

This caught a lot of owners by surprise if they were unaware of this function and opened their seat one day. All of a sudden the bike was dead and they were looking back under the seat to see if they had pinched a wire or broken something inside! There's also a 'Emergency' position on the switch that operated all your blinkers at once in the standard Hazard light fashion which everyone is real familiar with today, but was probably unheard of on most motorcycles back in 79'. Either way, it was nice to be able to shut the electrical system down if your battery was being run down even with the ignition switch. If you suspected a drain on the battery caused by a short or whatever the cause may of been, you could turn off the bike, put the key in the seat lock switch and turn the electrical system completely off. When you came back to start the bike, you might still have that problem with the drain, but at least your battery wasn't dead because of it.

On the Voyager you have a Hazard switch on the left handlebar but you don't have a main switch and there's a good reason in Kawasaki's eyes at least. The Voyager is designed to drain power off the battery at all times! Actually, there's a number of things that require power on this bike even when you shut it off and that's not necessarily a bad design on their part, it's more like the price you pay for having all those functions. To give you an idea of where all that power goes here's a list of a few things that come to mind. You have memory in the trip computer mounted on the gas tank, you have radio station memory presets, a clock, memory for the trip meter on the dash, plus who knows what else.

All of this power comes off a red/white wire that's connected to the starter solenoid and from there back to the positive terminal on the battery. This power feeds into a small inline fuse box that hangs down around the left side of your battery and below the relays that are mounted there. It's easy to find if you're looking. I cut the red/white power feed and run it up to my front fairing on the left side, through a key operated switch and back to the inline fuse box. That way I can cut all the power drains off my battery when the bike is not being ridden. If you let all this stuff constantly drain your battery, depending on how good your battery is, in a couple of weeks and sometimes less it can completely drain your battery or at least run it down far enough that there's not enough power left to start it.

For sure if you put this switch in as I have, you'll loose all those memory settings and you'll have to reset your clock and so forth. Instead of going this route most owners just keep their battery on a 'battery tender' or some type of battery charger that will keep it fully charged. And that's ok, but I usually ride my bike at least once every week or two and I don't use my radio, I don't pay any attention to the clock and I've never used the trip computer or the trip meter. It's easier for me just to flip the switch and shut everything off when I'm finished riding. If I do this, my battery will stay charged and my bike could sit all winter and still have plenty of power to start it right up.

There's one other possible benefit to this and a couple of things to be careful about. This is a hot wire you're running to the front that basically comes right off the battery. If it shorts anywhere in that run you make with it then that wire is going to turn red hot, but then all those wires you're bypassing with this switch are normally hot all the time too and that includes the wire to the radiator fan. You can't jump off the bike and turn your master switch off right away because your radiator fan cuts on and off by itself to cool the motor down after the ignition switch has been turned off. So it still needs power to it for awhile at least. If you're in a cold climate the fan might not cut on because the motor might not get hot enough, but here in Houston it's not uncommon for it to cut on and off 2 - 3 times cooling the engine down.

On the plus side you're killing all the power throughout the bike and owners have trouble from time to time with shorts or drains on the battery other than the things mentioned above. There's a lot of electrical components on this bike and I like knowing that I can shut it all down at will. Nothing worse than an electrical short and you're scrambling to get one of the cables off the battery while smoke is coming out of one of your electrical parts. The main switch is peace of mind.

Here's the fuse box you slice into. It should go without saying that all of these wiring connections I'm describing on this page have to be soldered. This fuse box itself has been a big issue on these bikes because if you open it up you'll probably see corroded connections. It's kind of a hokey connection inside that could of / should of been improved on with little effort. After all the engineering they spent on the rest of the bike to put something like this on the main power wires that have the most important electrical connections, the ones THAT KEEP THE BIKE RUNNING, doesn't make much sense. In the future, I'll have to come up with something to replace this small inline fuse box with.

There's another bundle of ground wires that all come together right in this area. I've seen these ground wires corroded to the point that I could easily guess, something wasn't getting a good ground connection. I didn't get a picture of them but they all congregate right there around the front of the battery door. Make sure you fix the ground wires while you have the solder gun out as I had to cut and solder some of these together so I could be sure everything that was supposed to be going to ground was getting a good connection.

I twist my wires and use black tie wraps for a better look.

Needless to say this needs to be a good quality wire that will carry a lot of current. I solder the ends and double heat shrink them.

There's a lot of wiring jammed in under the tank but for sure you don't want these to get pinched or rub on the tank.

The hole was already in my fairing so it's a handy entry point.

I use a generic ignition switch you can buy at any auto parts for about $10 or less. Mine has 'power', 'start' and 'accessory' positions. I use the 'power' connection but once you have a 12 volt terminal here you can use it for something else if you have a need. Just remember that this wire is not fused. david@kz1300.com

NOTE: On these newer browsers I've noticed that they don't always display my large images in full size when you open an image from the thumbnails. Once you click the thumbnail and open the larger image, if you 'mouse over' the image you should see a " + " symbol or some other indicator like a box with arrows usually on the bottom right edge of the image. If you click on the indicator, then the image will expand to it's full size which displays full screen on computers that use a 800 x 600 resolution setting for the monitor. If you click the indicator again it will go back to the smaller image. Some people use a resolution setting of 1024 x 768 or higher on their monitors and for those users the images will appear smaller than full screen in size. You can change your monitor settings easily enough if you desire. Also, the indicator I've noticed is slow to appear even after the image appears to of completely loaded. The indicator in Netscape seems to be a lot faster to display than the one in Internet Explorer.

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