Honda Rancher 420 Blown Main Fuse

When a Honda ATV immediately blows the main fuse, there's likely a direct short in the wiring. If that's the case, the trick now is to use a test light to find where the short is happening.

Partzilla's resident Honda ATV pro John Talley does live Q&A sessions every Friday at 3pm Eastern on our YouTube channel. In this edition, John gives his tips on how to resolve the issue of a Honda Rancher 420 blowing out its main fuse.

Honda Rancher 420 fuses

Honda ATV Main Fuse Blowing

The main 10 amp fuse on my Honda Rancher 420 blows as soon as I place it in. No power to anything on the machine but lights. Any ideas?

John Talley: Well, obviously there’s a direct short. I mean, if the machine is shut down and you put in that fuse and it pops immediately, there’s something shorted to ground. And typically when you see that, especially on a utility type machine, I wonder if you’ve been storing it outside or maybe in a barn, and it’s been sitting for a while. I’m thinking something maybe made a nest somewhere in the electrical harness and you’ve got two lines that are now making direct contact. So it’s going to be a game of finding the ground. One of the best ways I know to do that is to have a battery connected to the machine and then use a test light. Have the test side or the clamps side go to your positive, and that way whenever you hit a negative or ground with your probe, it’s going to light up the test light, and that’ll help make it easier to trace down where this is going on. Just keep in mind as you’re peeking around your wiring harness not to jab a bunch of holes in the wires themselves. Because when you do that, you have a perfectly sealed wire inside of an insulator and if you poke a hole in it, that means water and condensation and whatever can get in there will start to corrode that wire.