Starting issues

[Mr. Wright]

Not a question, but a how to for fixing one of them. A guy called me because his bike wouldn't start sometimes. When it did, it spun over just fine, then he would go through days of it not starting.
This is a good indication that the contacts in the start solenoid are dirty.
To clean them, first disconnect the battery, and make sure the cable won't slide over and touch the terminal, or this will happen. But that's a different story I don't want to discuss right now.

What I'm working on is a K9. The Mastiff is just as hard to get to, but a lot of the other bikes, this is a easy job. If you don't know where your start solenoid is, it right in there. 3 bolts, you can see the top one in the picture.


To make it easier to get to, remove you side cover. On some bikes, you will need to remove the rear bolt from the belt guard.

After removing the three bolts, and removing the cover, you can get to the plunger.

 

[Mr. Wright]

Reach in and pull the plunger and spring out together.

Now this is really important. I've run into it many times. Take a long small screw driver and check the solider connections, on each side, in the solenoid.

If you have a pencil attachment for your Dremal, and a wire brush, that works the best. I don't, but I managed to get the whole Dremal in there. If you don't have either, sand paper works good too.

After cleaning both contacts and the brass ring on the plunger, clean everything with contact cleaner, and blow it out.

You can see in the above picture, the covering on the cable between the solenoid and the starter, is coming apart. They make liquid electrical tape, that works really good for repairing that.
Now, before putting the plunger and spring back in the hole, make sure the battery cable isn't touching the terminal. It only takes a half second to burn that spring in half.
When reinstalling the cover, put the lower front bolt in the cover first, then slide the cover in. Makes it a lot easier to start that bolt.
This job took 30 minutes, including digging through my junk drawer to find a new spring.

 

[roadie1389]

That boot has seen better days as well!

 

[Big Kev]

Looks like something I may have to try to fix my 06 Mastiff. I went to start it for riding season last month & after sitting on the Tender all off season she turned over once then the starter just a loud clicking sound like the plunger is bouncing back & forth! The battery is 2 years old now & the same thing happened last year so I took the battery back & had it tested, was told it was good. Got home reinstalled it, left it on Tender overnight & it fired up fine all last season! I left it a couple days after my initial failure to start & it didn’t even turn over just the clicking sound. Bikes only got 5,000 miles on her but I guess it could need at starter, kinda what a car starter sounds like when it needs replacing. Any ideas??

 

[TapioK]

Looks like something I may have to try to fix my 06 Mastiff. I went to start it for riding season last month & after sitting on the Tender all off season she turned over once then the starter just a loud clicking sound like the plunger is bouncing back & forth! The battery is 2 years old now & the same thing happened last year so I took the battery back & had it tested, was told it was good. Got home reinstalled it, left it on Tender overnight & it fired up fine all last season! I left it a couple days after my initial failure to start & it didn’t even turn over just the clicking sound. Bikes only got 5,000 miles on her but I guess it could need at starter, kinda what a car starter sounds like when it needs replacing. Any ideas??

Don’t you guys always jump to most expensive option take your car, not running, and use cables to start. See what happens. Be careful with the live wires and do not run the car engine.

 

[Big Kev]

Yeah I hear ya TapioK, hoping not to drop much cash if I can help it but want her up & running!

 

[Rottweiler]

Put battery on a real charged for a day or two. One that puts out 6 amps


Sent from my Life One X3 using Tapatalk

 

[Ernie12]

Thanks Shannon that is a great Tip.

 

[Coolbreezin]

My spring broke, so I thought. I did have trouble starting after that. I know there are so many places to look, clean, so on. But I never thought that would be the problem. Thank you for that info.