Re: [St] The Dreaded "No Start" Syndrome

[Nathan Maher <nate@xxxxxxxxxx>]

List,

Just a follow up to this - the problem continued to be intermittent and 
truth be told, with the birth of my daughter 5 weeks ago fixing it became 
far less a priority.

Anyway, this past weekend I fired the bike up to go get it inspected 
(finally) and on the way the issue manifested itself again.  I happened 
to be in a parking lot right next to a Tiger rider, although he wasn't on 
his mount that day.  We looked things over and as best we could tell the 
only real plausible explanation for the behavior was a simple bad 
connection, not a short.  The reason, no amount of bending, twisting or 
tweaking of the wires helped, but as soon as I giggled the wires 
connected to the battery I was back off and running.  So last night I 
removed the battery and low and behold the terminals were pretty cruddy 
looking.  I wonder if this happened when I had the battery out for 
charging last year (I didn't remove it this year)?  So I attacked the 
terminals with some fine grit sand paper and there was quite the layer of 
crap.  After reattaching the battery leads (which I also cleaned) all 
appears well.  I took the bike to work today, glorious to be doing that 
again, and so far so good.  Of course if I report back tonight that I 
never made it home we'll know my diagnosis was incorrect.  But so far all 
signs point to it being a plausible explanation.

In semi-related news I talked with my dealer about selling the bike for 
me on consignment.  I've known the owner for the better part of 8 years 
now and he looked me right in the eye and said, "Don't even think about 
it.  Put it away, ride it 100 miles a year, it's worth twice as much to 
you as it is to anyone else."  For the record, he figured that it'd be 
worth ~$3500 which jives with what the list thought.  But more 
importantly, he's right.  I recently transferred my insurance to my 
primary carrier (home and auto) and my premium dropped to a whopping $150 
per year and reg and tax cost next to nothing with this thing these days. 
 So looks like for now I'll ride Leeloo when I can, keep her clean and 
cared for and stuff the idea of moving on.

Maybe I'll leave work early today...

Nate
00SprintRS
_______________________________________________
Triumph Sprint ST/RS mailing list
Send list posts to ST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Change your list options at www.Triumphnet.com