2018 Starter Fix Thread - Continued.

[ssaulnier]

I tried depressing and releasing the kill botton while cranking but still no start.
Then if I kick it starts ok.

Seems to crank fine using electric starter but often no start unless engine is warm.

[RudolfHucker]

If you pull the spark plug, are you getting a spark in all scenarios with the starter?

[Wypipo]

Originally Posted by ssaulnier

I tried depressing and releasing the kill botton while cranking but still no start.
Then if I kick it starts ok.

Seems to crank fine using electric starter but often no start unless engine is warm.

How many kicks does it take your bike to start?

[ssaulnier]

If I have primed the bike and get a good kick, just one kick generally. But sometimes 3 or 4.

The drill to prime the bike is turn on the fuel, put bike in 2nd gear, rock bike forward and back 4 or 5 times to draw some fuel vapors into the engine. Then put bike in neutral, slowly depress the kick lever down until the piston comes up against compression, very gently depress kicker until piston is just past top dead center, let kicker come back to top and give it a good full stroke.

If engine doesn?t fire in 3 or 4 kicks I reprime.

Once started, I blip the handle bar mounted choke to keep it running and rev it a bit. After 30 seconds or so I start riding slowly, test the brakes and throttle, do a few full lock turns to get my balance, a couple straight line runs to clean out the bike and then go riding.

[ssaulnier]

Rudolph, that is a good question. I will pull the plug and see if I have spark with the electric starter. Will report back.

[ssaulnier]

One more piece of information. Before I installed additional ground wires from the battery to the coil and from the coil to the starter bracket sometimes it took many kicks to start. And the number of kicks seems to be random. I suspect I was not getting spark and I noticed that the hour meter speedometer display sometimes did not illuminate while kicking.

Note that I did not install the factory recommended 8 AWG wires, but used much smaller 12 AWG since that is what I had available. I think the 12 wire has helped the kick starting but not the electric starting.

[RudolfHucker]

You can always add a 2nd run of 12AWG to the starter bracket and go direct from the battery.

[SS109]

Yeah, 12 awg is way too small. Double up or fatten it up.