Hi All,

I put my bike away in the late fall and am now having issues starting it. It cranks unbelievably slow when attempting to start and the headlight dims during attempts at cranking. Battery is not an issue (tried it with the bike's battery and also with jumpers to my car's battery to see if battery was an issue).

The only thing that I can think of that could be related is an incident I had in the fall after I stored the bike: I was starting it up and thought it was in neutral. Standing next to the bike, I started it and then let go of the clutch. The bike jumped forward a few feet and hit a rubber storage box that was in front of it (saddle bag crash bars also hit me pretty good in the leg and knocked me a few feet over to the side).

At this point I'm not even attempting to start it for fear of burning up my starter.

Here's a link to a very short video I made showing what happens when I try to start it (it's uploaded to Google docs, so it will open in a player on the page): FLHPI Won't Start

Any ideas? This is not a very good start to the spring riding season!

Thanks,

JRK

 

Think the starter might already be shot? Since you trie the battery im thinking its the starter. Not sur how hard ya hit but it coul also be the engine timing. Id venture to bet on the starter.

 

Might not be the battery. But I believe it might be corrosion on the battery terminals and/or cable ends. Disconnect them and scrape them clean. Include the ones on the starter. I think your starter is OK.

 

Yes clean the cables both at the battery and the starter. When the light goes out you have no battery connection or the battery is dead. Start with the cables if they are okay charge & load test the battery.

 

It's gotta be the cables - I even tried a different battery (removed the bike battery and jumped the system directly from my car's battery....not the greatest option to test things, but all I had at the time).

If I check the cables at the starter end and they are okay, is there anything else that could be causing.

 

check the ground cable too (both ends), corrosion will cause this type of thing.

 

Get to the bottom of this yet?

 

It's still a work in progress. I pulled the cables and cleaned all the contact points (including ground to frame) - there was a decent amount of oxidization. I also applied some dielectric gel while I was doing all that to help prevent future oxidization.

Now that I've been playing with it for a while, I think I really sent the battery to it's grave - even after a charge it won't even crank the bike at all. I'm going to order a new battery and see if that makes a difference.

If the new battery fails to get the bike started, what's the next investigative step?

 

There won't be a next step, I'm betting the battery will fix it...

 

Fingers crossed. Battery ordered from Amazon and should be here Thursday - I'll know this weekend where things stand. At least now all the main wire contacts have been cleaned up.