Starter not starting occasionally

Maybe no road salt, but almost constant high humidity can also do bad things
to connections & solenoids over time...

 

If you ran on a 40 mile trip and found the battery discharged
afterwards, you might have a problem such as a bad
regulator or an "off" switch that didn't really shut things off.

Sounds like one way or another you managed to discharge
the battery one time, while the rest of the time it works OK.

Any aftermarket stuff on the bike hooked into the electrics ?

 

wrote in @j33g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:

Grab a jumper cable and jumper across the solenoid. Make sure it is out of
gear and on the center stand.

 

My own story: (I'm a newbie biker) I bought a 82 Honda and the starter
worked off and
on for about a month. Suspected the battery but charged it completely
at Kragen and tried to start it again. No luck. Just out of curiosity
took the starter apart. Apart from some soot and bad contact areas
I didn't see anything serious there. I just cleaned everything and put
it back. Started the bike but no luck again. Disconnected the starter
relay
switch, took the battery out and applied 12v across the coil and
checked continuity across M and B terminals. Open! Tried again.
Open! Went to a bike salvage shop in town and rummaged through
their big plastic container of relay swithes (there was at least a
thousand of them in there), found something that looked similar for
$20. Checked continuity and it is ok. The bike starts every time now.

 

People report success taking the Bosch starters to (whoda thunk it ?)
a starter repair shop. If your bike really has a solenoid/starter setup
like a car this would be a reasonable starting point.

Note that not all bikes use automotive type starters and the ones that
do are not always easy to work on.

You ought to specify make/model/year whenever asking a tech
question. You'd get better answers if you did.

You might also try eBay and google searches.

 

That is what I suspect also. I'll examine it upon the next time I take the
bike apart.

 

I reckon you could have got a new one for that.

 

Checked with my local parts dealer and found that it would have cost me
$48.00 for an
after market part. If you know about a better source for parts, let me
know.

 

You're right, actually. Unbelievable prices. I've just checked.