Kill switch fault

[Dave487]

When putting in the wiring on the 400 I had a spare green wire from the RH handlebar switch which terminated under the tank along with all other connectors. In thinking that it must be an earth I put a ring tag on it  and connected it to the frame.

When I came to check the ignition timing I found that there was no power to the coils and after tracing the circuit through I found that power for the coils comes directly from the kill switch via black/white wire and should be powered by a black to the live side of the switch.

On my kill switch I have a black/white wire and a green which is the one that I  put to earth. This is clearly wrong as the green wire needs to be live when the ignition switch is on in order to feed the coils via the black/white.

 I thought it would be a simple matter of changing the green wire to live and this worked fine except that now RUN is either of the two stop positions and STOP is in the run position.
 The wires  to the kill switch are both in sleeving and look original but obviously don't match the wiring diagram.

Has anyone come across the same situation? I can only think that the switch has been replaced at some time with one from a different bike. OR AM I MISSING THE OBVIOUS !!!!!

[mike the bike]

No.  The kill switch feeds 12V to the coils via the black/white wire.   The other side of the kill switch is black (12V).  I know, black = positive, makes no sense.

[Bryanj]

The switch you have is not a 400 four but a 400 twin one and as you have found the kill switches work totally different. As long as you know about it the fact it has to be turned off to run could be an anti theft deterent

[Dave487]

That makes sense and as you say it is a bit of a deterrent, I was just a bit worried that the MOT man might spot it and fail me on safety grounds. I'll just have to hope for the best.

Thanks a lot for that.