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I have an older harley with a shovelhead style starter setup and when the battery is low the solenoid sticks on and stays on until the battery dies or you disconnect a lead such a great design.

Brushes could be worn in starter, or carbon build up, if your checking the solenoid pull the starter out and check it also, just my 2 cents, had problem with mine with slow cranking, turned out to be the starter motor brushes

Having trouble locating the earth lead to the engine. Battery is located in the sidecar. Mind you I would have trouble if battery was located on bike. Any hints??

Thankyou again gents for all your help, Fantastic! The main reason I started on this journey was because I wasn't riding the bike hardly at all due to reliability with starting the bike when it was hot. If I stopped the bike when hot it would be nigh impossible to start, it displayed the symptoms of what I thought was a flat battery. Now I have been educated to find that it could be mechanical, electrical or both.

SOLUTION ONE: The holding plate of the alternator lead was not screwing 'down and in' far enough and after installing the stator cover the rotor was pressed hard up against the holding plate. Of course this caused some decent friction and roughed-up the outer edge of the rotor and scarred the holding plate. Thanks RickG for the heads up on poor assembly - Guilty as charged.

SOLUTION TWO: Pulled out the Starter Relay and pulled it apart, obviously breaking the connections whilst doing so but I'm not too worried as I have a new one arriving any day. It did have pitting on the bar and on the two contact areas. I didn't think it was too bad, but that is coming from a first timer seeing this sort of thing. I have VERY shaky hands and soldering is not to be attempted by me so repairing it is out. Thanks Scotch I will not throw it away as I may find someone else who can do it eventually. I will be aiming for the 1-2 seconds start time, may have to get a stator rewind first though

SOLUTION THREE: Sprayed some machine oil into the spark plug holes and turned it by hand it felt easier to turn straight away, so after a couple of days hopefully it will be even better. Thanks again RickG.

I have dragged out the Starter motor and I will be pulling that apart next. I feel that there is much more that I will have to learn and fix or break before she lives again. I'm not discounting problems with the ignition coils either. The biggest problem I have right now is being able to identify parts because photo's in the electronic copy of the Service Manual are not legible for the most part. That combined with the battery and a second fuel tank located in the sidecar has meant some creative wiring etc by the previous owner(s).

Yaegunp wrote: Having trouble locating the earth lead to the engine. Battery is located in the sidecar. Mind you I would have trouble if battery was located on bike. Any hints??

Pg. 96 in the manual shows a ground lead attaching to the engine around the crankcase half joint just to the left of the driveshaft. (One of the reasons for keeping an electronic copy of the manual on the computer. You can get the computer to search the document for .......)

Thanks Kawboy. My original Manual was jpg files captured into a pdf and was not searchable but I have now converted it to searchable. Earth lead didn't come up, neither did engine ground, plus several others I typed in. Always helps when you now what your looking for I say.