Resurrecting my '79 KZ1300 from a 28-year nap

I would have been smacking that solenoid with anything I could get my hands on. Starter run on for more than 20 seconds could desolder the windings on the armature and that's not good. Another reason to spend a few bucks and replace the starter solenoid when it shows signs of acting up. Also worthy of noting, when bikes don't start after a couple of turns of the crank, something's wrong and something's going to pay the price for that. Starter solenoids are intermittent switches and not meant to run a continuous draw over 100 amps for any length of time before giving them a chance to cool off.

Thanks for sharing the mishap. Gives us a topic to discuss.

Cheers,

Kawboy wrote: I would have been smacking that solenoid with anything I could get my hands on. Starter run on for more than 20 seconds could desolder the windings on the armature and that's not good. Another reason to spend a few bucks and replace the starter solenoid when it shows signs of acting up. Also worthy of noting, when bikes don't start after a couple of turns of the crank, something's wrong and something's going to pay the price for that. Starter solenoids are intermittent switches and not meant to run a continuous draw over 100 amps for any length of time before giving them a chance to cool off.

Thanks for sharing the mishap. Gives us a topic to discuss.

Cheers,

I was hitting the solenoid. It's like the contacts inside welded together. Even after it cooled off, you could still read a dead short across the main power cable terminals.

The solenoid never gave any indication of failing. Just stuck on one day.

I took it on about a 500 mile ride up the parkway this past weekend. Rode great the whole way. I did discover that my radiator fan has stopped working again. I suspect that I just bumped wires off the relay terminals during the starter solenoid fiasco and just didn't discover it til the trip, but I haven't yet had time to troubleshoot the problem.

Re: The starter solenoid.
It's like the contacts inside welded together. Even after it cooled off, you could still read a dead short across the main power cable terminals.

That's exactly what happened! Over cranking has accumulatively over-heated the contacts and contact bar. The starter solenoid is easy to disassemble. You're going to find the two contacts and the contact bar that bridges them, will be burned and pitted. The bar is likely bent slightly from the extreme heat created by this high resistance.
You may be able to clean-up the two contacts. The contact bar should be straightened but the arch-pitting on each end can't be addressed. You might think you can file down the bar ends to get into clean material but in doing so you'll be making these areas thinner and this will result in a future failure - sooner then later. Simply turn the bar over ! The important thing to keep in mind is the bar and contacts must make a "flat" contact. In other words: You want the maximum contact area possible. The contacts must be filed flat. This is why the bar must be straightened (flattened).

Just a "Nuclear repair" possibility here. My control techs used to have my mechanics build up electrical contacts with Easy-flo silver solder and then file to original contour. Silver solder has less resistance than copper. Just thought I'd mention it for those in the trade.

I'm feeling "Nuclear ":whistle:

www.kz1300.com/index.php/forum/welcome-n...ike-won-t-start#8781

Starting to think about letting go of this bike. I recently hosted a big Volvo meet up in the hills here, and have a newfound urge to get back to my perpetual project '79 Volvo 244. I bought a complete LS2 engine for it, and selling this would allow me to fund that project in one fell swoop.

What do you all think would be a fair price? Maybe I'll just list it on Bring A Trailer and see what happens.