Super HOT brown wire going into the key.

[David Allaband]

Hi all. The brown wire going into the key switch is super hot. It melted the socket so I removed the socket and wired the three lines together without it but that brown wire is still super hot. A short I guess? No problems when the bike is off and the battery has never shown any sign of being low. Anyone have experience with this? Before I start the blind search over the entire bike for some mysterious electrical problem.

[aviationfred]

The brown wire goes directly to your Regulator/Rectifier with no other wires spliced in.

Fred

[Earl Svorks]

A wire getting hot indicates too much current flowing through that wire. The cause can be
any number of things. In this case, brown is the colour for anything on keyed voltage on your FJ, The fact that no fuses are blowing suggests to me that this isn't yer plain old overload, rather, if memory serves, you posted something about your reg/rec getting hot.
I think you need to verify that you haven't wired your alternator output in such a way that it's going to battery through that brown wire. Your alternator red lead must go directly to the battery positive terminal, at the solenoid. it is not fused or switched ,it must be a firm
connection. Any heat in that circuit indicates a bad connection. The brown wire should have switched, fused ignition voltage only

[Pat Conlon]

David, do you have a wiring diagram for your bike?

They're in the back of every Owners Manual which you can download for free.

[David Allaband]

I have some (maybe) answers. My right turn signal flashed fast but both bulbs worked so I figured out that the wrong bulb got in there somehow. The socket was corroded and the bulb contacts eaten away. After that the brown wire was a little less hot. So I pulled the headlight connection and the wire cooled down more.

So the solution I'm working on now is one of those headlight relays from Randy.

http://www.rpmracingca.com/proddetail.asp?prod=5PinRelay

Get that load off the old wiring system. Also going to do a coil relay at the same time. When I did all this checking the engine was off so I assume the three power loads together (headlight, coils and bad signal bulb) caused my wiring meltdown.

Thanks for the advice! I hope this fixes it!