Strange Starting Problem

[Dave Ditner]

Well 6 Pipes, you helped me with my cold start accel. pump problem so maybe I can help you out. Same thing started happening to me a week ago. Same senario in the parking lot too!! Got the bike home and tried cranking- slow and labored. Tore the sidecovers off thinking it might be loose terminals on the battery but no. Noticed the ground cable for the negative side of the battery was quite hot. Upon further looking the wire had been previously been heated up to the point that the copper had gone brittle and 80 % of the wire was fractured inside the insulation. I suspect because of the excessive cranking to start it when I had the pump problem, the cable overheated and ruined the copper. So far new cable = no pushing. Hope this might help you.

That heat you felt was trying to tell you something. That's where your resistance was. A lot of amps can really drive it. The formula is Amps squared times resistance Dirty or loose connections do it all the time. Sometimes with long bolts just loose enough the issue only occurs when things are warm and thermally elongated reducing the bolt's clamp load and increasing connection resistance.