That, my dears, is the sound of a very flat battery driving the starter motor on a GT550.
Thanks to my dear friend John, the as yet unnamed Kawasaki now sports a working ignition system. Despite the LIES of the previous owner (just laid it up and the battery’s run flat my arse) it seems, so far, to have just had the two faults:
This was the earth strap:
Having replaced that, however, there was a disappointing lack of life. Although the battery’s not in great shape, we were getting about 11.5v at the battery, but at the ignition we had only 1.3v. That is a bit weak, and it turned out to be impressive that we were getting anything because a small chunk of the once copper wiring which had been the ignition positive had corroded away to become a thin layer of copper oxide:
Having lopped it off, and replaced it with a fresh connector (not a chocolate block) and sealed it with self amalgamating tape (optimistic, I am) this was achieved:
Well, that and the aforementioned “Whirrrrr….click”. So I guess now it’s time to get some fresh petrol and a new battery.
I also, being as I was in the fixy mood, repaired the cable on the worklamp which I noticed was a bit flickery. I think I’ve noticed that before, and tightened the screws in the plug, but it didn’t work. Today I looked a bit more closely and it looks like the wireclamp on the plug was done up by someone wanting to do some kind of test of strength. It’d nearly chopped the cable in half…so I lopped the end off that, popped the plug back on and lo, working lamp. Then, just by chance – well, while I was testing that lamp I noticed the plug on the extension lead (that came free with our chopsaw and) that I’ve been using down in the garage a fair bit, was awfully hot. A quick look at that revealed something fairly horrendous:
Not only were the cables sickly – there’s no earth. Seriously, no earth on an extension lead in a workshop. Geeze (Louise). It now sports a brand new cable, sadly PVC so not quite as flexible, but it has three cores and has a whole bundle of safetyness that was previously lacking.
Productive, today, I feel.
I also modified the carrier / pannier rack off my old hybrid bike to fit my new (older) BSA. Unfortunately, I need slightly longer bolts to hold it in, so I’ll have to go source them.
Oh, and had a trip to Halfords that removed all the impressedness that I got yesterday, but never mind :)
