Last weekend my 2014 500 EXC started running poorly part way through the day. It would pop/back fire and cut out momentarily at mid rpm intermittenently. Seemed to run fine at high rpm. Kept riding and it progressively got worse and worse until it eventually wouldn't run at anything above an idle. It was running like it had a really low rev limiter and would stutter and not rev up much past idle. Ended up towing the bike back to the truck.
After a bunch of poking around it ended up being a broken wire in the harness where it goes from the R/H side frame above the radiator up into the handlebars. The wire that goes to the stop/run switch was broken off completely when i pulled it apart. It must have been partially making contact, and a couple other ones had cracked insulation with partially intact wires inside.
I'd say the failure was caused by continuous flexing of the wire harness in that area, cold temps and the extremely poor quality wire that KTM uses to build the harness. I have seen others have issues with wire harnesses on these bikes as well. Pretty disapointing to have such junky wire on a 10K+ bike. Something to look into if anybody else is having issues. I might rewire that section of the harness with better quality wire to help eliminate further problems.
After a bunch of poking around it ended up being a broken wire in the harness where it goes from the R/H side frame above the radiator up into the handlebars. The wire that goes to the stop/run switch was broken off completely when i pulled it apart. It must have been partially making contact, and a couple other ones had cracked insulation with partially intact wires inside.
I'd say the failure was caused by continuous flexing of the wire harness in that area, cold temps and the extremely poor quality wire that KTM uses to build the harness. I have seen others have issues with wire harnesses on these bikes as well. Pretty disapointing to have such junky wire on a 10K+ bike. Something to look into if anybody else is having issues. I might rewire that section of the harness with better quality wire to help eliminate further problems.
