Engine - Drivetrain

i don't know about the piston getting damaged, but i can almost bet the valves got bent?. now that you got the head off, i would remove the valves, and have a peek to see if they got bent.

i would look on power sports nation, and see if they have a wire harness in stock ?, they stand behind what they sell. you can also look on ebay. both places will run neck and neck in prices ?,but power sports nation is easier to deal with, used them a lot in the past, very good company !.

answer: c.d.i. is bad !. word from the wise, THAT YEAR MODEL IS A ONE-YEAR ONLY AS FAR AS THE C.D.I. GOES ?!. in other words..you MUST have a c.d.i. from another running 1986 trx350 fourtrax in order to work.

oh well, life goes on..lol. thanks for the input !.

Thread update: Since posting this morning... I have figured out the issue of why the left handlebar assembly is not talking to the ECM. Not to say there wont be something else once this is solved somehow but at least now I know the main problem. So I unplugged the 22p connector at the ECM and used my continuity tester to check the wires at that harness. Service manaul says you basically check continuity between red/black and white/blue as your pushing the up/down button and the red/black and yellow/white (don't remember which is up/down).... but with everything else plugged in and testing at the unplugged 22p harness at ECM, zero continuity for either button. So then I did the same testing but isolated the left handlebar assembly only and everything there worked perfectly. So then I tested each wire between the 22p harness that plugs into the ECU and at the unplugged harness where the handlebar assembly normally plugs in. I have continuity at the white/blue and also at the yellow/white but ZERO at the red/black. Since that wire is common for both the up/down switch it made a lot more sense why neither button would tell the ECM to shift gears.   So.... I either have a wire broken inside the harness OR where the wire/pin connects at one of the harness has a bad connection. I have checked everything visible very carefully and see no obvious damage so I am hoping its a bad connection at the pin since that is fixable. I am gonna do a little searching to see if there is any instructions on how to re-pin the connections. If its not that and the wire is broken somewhere there is no chance I will be able to pinpoint the break easily and would be better for me too just run another separate wire as long as I can find the correct pins required to do that. Any chance anyone knows which pins Honda uses and if that's something I can buy so I can fix it myself? Only other option I know of is too replace the entire harness which I hope to avoid. I havent seen the bypass kit yet so not sure if that solves this without me repairing the wires but my hope is that I can fix it back to oem now that I have pinpointed the problem and not have to use the bypass kit for the shifting.