My tinkering got me in trouble as usual .
I was replacing the gear lever linkage that connects to the shifting shaft. The old linkage was stuck so took a lot of effort pulling it out from the shaft. Likewise, the new one went in only half way through the shaft, the rest of the way I had to gently tap it with the hammer to sit it all the way inside. Job done, the gear changes felt fine with bike turned off. But lo’ and behold when I tried to start the bike - no response.
To elaborate, when I turn the ignition on - speedometer/headlight come on, and I can hear the fuel pump priming. When I click the starter button, I can hear the starter relay clicking, and the headlight dims but there is no cranking whatsoever.
I’ve checked the battery. 12.71V when cold and at rest. Drops to 11.97V when I turn the ignition on. Very little/no change when I press the starter button. Just to be sure, I’ve also tried attaching a booster/jumper battery pack to the bike’s battery - no luck.
As to the various switches. I’ve shorted the connectors for the clutch handlebar lever switch to eliminate a possibility of a faulty switch. The sidestand and killswitch give an error “CHECK” on speedometer when in wrong position as usual, and error disappears once in the correct position, so no issues there.
I managed to get the bike running by push starting it in 2nd gear going downhill. Ridden it for a couple minutes, went into 1st, 2nd and neutral gears - all working normally. It appears I didn’t damage anything at least directly when playing with the shift shaft.
The speedometer gives a C12 error (CKP sensor) but only after 3 seconds of holding the starter button as mentioned in the manual. I checked the resistances between the CKP connector pins as per service manual, which are normal. And, also confirmed there is no continuity to ground from those pins. The manual says to also check the peak voltage but, from what I understand, with no crank it’s not going to show any voltage anyway (and it does not in my case).
What limited experience I have, leads me to suspect either a faulty starter relay or a faulty starter motor. I haven’t had the chance to properly test the relay (I did notice the main fuse for it was intact) due to the lovely weather outside and no cover, but I did try to bypass it. I’m not quite sure if this trick works on bandits, though, as it’s something I found online in relation to other bikes. All I did was put a screwdriver across to bridge the two big bolts on the relay. This had no effect at all, which tells me either this bypass doesn’t work on my bike or the starter motor is faulty. Hasn’t anyone tried this bypass, and do you think my conlcusion is likely to be correct?
I actually had a similar issue a few years ago. Annoyingly I never found out the exact cause, it just started working eventually. @National_Treasure figured it was probably a loose/dirty connection somewhere that I sorted at some point during the investigation.
