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Lance Cali Classic 125 CDI Ignition Wiring

After searching for a few hours and coming up with all the wrong information, I am posting this wiring diagram of a Lance Cali Classic CDI ignition circuit. Unlike most scooter CDI ignitions, the Lance is a DC (direct current) capacitive discharge ignition system. This means the scooter will not run without a battery in it.

This exact scooter was a 2016 Lance Cali Classic 125. The original problem was intermittent starting, the customer said he would flip the switch once of twice and then it would start. The scooter was in good shape and the switch wasn’t broken or damaged in any way. It appears that the company used dielectric or silicone grease on the switches and over the course of years it became sticky and actually ended up coating the contact in the switch causing the condition.

Fortunately while I was working on it, the switch quit working altogether. I was using an oscilloscope at the time, as I tested the pick up sensor and was looking at other things, trying to figure out what was what, and come up with my own wiring diagram, as there is no service manual or accurate wiring diagram that I could find. All the replacement CDI units I saw were also AC CDI units, which is incorrect.

What clued me into this being a DC CDI system was that there was no black/red wire coming out of the stator, just 2 Yellow wires. The wiring at the CDI Unit also didn’t quit match the AC unit diagrams, even though the wire colors were the same. Up at the kill switch the 2 wire colors are black, which is the 12 volts battery power and the CDI power wire is Brown up at the switch, and then obviously changes into Black/Red some where in the harness. I didn’t go digging that far to see where that happens, probably at a plug connection.

Anyway here is a correct diagram. Hope it saves someone the headache I had to go through.

Lance Cali Classic 125 CDI ignition wiring diagram

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Amperage Draw of Fuel Injected Harley’s

Here are some “average” amp draw amounts for the different circuits on a fuel injected Harley-Davidson. These were taken off of a 2009 Softail Heritage. I took them at the fuse (relay) box looking for a bad component that was drawing a lot of power. In this case it ended up being a bad tail light flasher thing made by BikeTronics. While these figures are for the Softail, these figures will be about the same for almost all bikes. Example a headlight circuit will pretty much draw the same power. Same thing with the ECM’s.

  • Tail Light 1.5 amps
  • Head Light 4.4 amps
  • Head Light + spot lamps 7.8 amps
  • ECM 5.2-5.5 amps (varies due to injector driver circuit)
  • Ignition .2 amps
  • Speedometer .2 amps
  • Key Off, battery draw .2 amps

In my case, the tail light circuit was drawing 4 to 5 amps and this seemed weird because I knew from testing things all the time, that 1157 tail light bulbs generally draw 2 amps. By luck since this thing just plugged in, I took it out of circuit and the tail light then drew the 1.5 amps. The part was not burnt or looked damaged in any way. I believe it also did something with the blinkers, running lights maybe? Don’t remember, honestly.

The original problem the bike came in for was bad charging system, not charging. The stator wasn’t putting out and you could see it got hot. I replaced everything with new, good parts, (regulator and stator, and it had a brand new battery) and it charged, but it was charging low. It was just barely charging at 13.5 volts @ over 2500 rpm. Most modern Harley’s charge @ 14.2 volts at idle or just off idle.

I mention this because you should always investigate something if you think it isn’t quite right. I could have technically sent it out the door, charging and fixed, but it would have eventually been back with the same problem.