No response out of starter button

[tsalas]

Hey guys,

I ride a 1980 r65 and I'm having trouble getting it started. Here are the details:

When i turn the ignition to "ON" the headlight and control lights come on and the horn works (battery must be charged right?)

The bike does not recognize that it is in neutral, therefore the neutral light does not come on

When I pull in the clutch (while in neutral) and the kill switch is set to "RUN" I get absolutely no response out of the starter button. No clicks, no turn over, no dimming of any lights... absolutely nothing.

Please let me know if you can help!!

[Bob_Roller]

I don't have any idea of your mechanical or electrical experience .

But here goes, first thing I would do, is to bypass the neutral switch and the clutch interlock switch at the clutch lever with jumper wires, to take the safety circuits out of the picture .

But, quite often, the battery is the culprit, they don't take much abuse and if you don't operate the bike at highway speeds, the charging system isn't going to charge the battery with 'city' riding .

[nhmaf]

First - do you have a multimeter/voltmeter?   Please verify that the battery voltage is at least 12.6V at rest with the keyswitch "OFF" (Ideally it will be closer to 13V).   If it is at or below 12.0, the battery is weak and at least will need some charging.   Usually though, a marginal battery will still elicit some "chatter" from the relay as it attempts to start the bike, but cannot provide the big pulse of current needed to get the starter motor spinning.

If the battery is good, most often, it is usually the clutch lever switch, OR the transmission  neutral switch that fails.    If you cannot get the neutral light to light nor get any starter action (or even hear the relay click) at all, it would seem that you have an broken or insecure connection.

Here is a simplified picture of the circuit involved:



If the diode is bad and blown open, you should still be able to start the bike using the clutch lever switch to ground the relay.  If the diode is bad and short circuited, then the neutral light will come on every time you squeeze the clutch lever.   Since neither of those seem to happen,  you either have :
A) 1 or more bad wire connections - check at the relay first and clean the terminals etc. on that.
B) a blown bulb, which would of course prevent it from lighting, but should not totally prevent starting
C) 2 broken switches or disconnects at each switch (statistically very unlikely, but not totally impossible)
D) A defective relay.

[MR.E]

i had this a few weeks ago, i stripped the switch, uncovered the stator etc it took ages.
Eventually i got to the starter relay, dead, £5 for a new one off i went!

I'd be tempted to check that before a mass 'testing' of the bike.

Hope it helps.

[k_enn]

If it is just a dead relay, the neutral light should still come on when in neutral.

[tsalas]

Thanks for the help guys, i did some investigating and my clutch switch was already bypassed so I isolated it to the neutral switch at the bottom of the transmission.

I messed around with it (w/o actually taking it apart) and got the neutral light working, so I'm pretty sure its a faulty connection. I'm taking my bike up to my buddy's garage and fixing it this weekend, any pros/cons to just bypassing the switch all-together?

[Bob_Roller]

With the interlocks bypassed, the starter will operate if the transmission is in gear .

You can bypass the starter relay to see if it the problem part, first you need to identify the relay, it should be a relay with a plastic cover and should have a wiring diagram molded in to top of the cover .

You need to remove the positive cable form the battery .

Reason is, there is a red wire going to the connector that the relay mounts into and it's 'hot' all the time, meaning it has power direct from the battery .

After the cable is removed from the connector base, remove the relay, you may need to pry it out with a flat blade screwdriver .

If you don't remove the cable from the battery, you may touch the hot blade of the relay to a ground and get a 'shower of sparks'.

After the relay is removed, reconnect the positive cable to the battery .

Then insert a bare wire between the slots on the connector base that have the red wire and black wire .

When you do  this, the starter should operate, so you need the transmission in neutral .

This checks to make sure the starter is not faulty .

You can check the relay while it's out of the bike, you need to get wires on the blades of the relay that correspond to the slots in the base that have wire colors blue with a yellow spiral band and brown with a black spiral band, then connect them to  a 12v dc power source .

If the windings are good in the relay, it should click when power is applied and removed .

To check the load contacts of the relay, connect a multimeter to the blades on the relay that would be connected to the red wire and the black wire, when you apply power to activate the relay, the multimeter should read 0, or at best an ohm or two .

I had a relay that would click, but the load contacts stayed 'open', I removed the cover and adjusted the arm that is spring loaded and got the relay to work for a few more years .

These tests need to be done with a known good battery .

Hope I didn't confuse you too much with this !!!!!