Last Saturday and today, I was the last person to leave Shapiro’s. My bike would not start.
A week ago and again today, when I started home my 2015 GSA would not start. I went through all the common problems such as side-stand down and in gear, etc. My mind wasn’t playing tricks–it should start but wouldn’t. I flipped the kickstand up and down a few times and it did start. When I got home today, I closely checked the side-stand kill switch and found it to be cracked.
If you have to order such a switch be sure to give your dealer your VIN number. It turns out for my model motorcycle there were two styles of kill switches, one has wires coming out and the other takes a plug. Mine takes a plug and my dealer had one.
While I had the defective switch out, I decided to test a method of bypassing the kill switch in case you have an incident in the field. I happened to have some jumper wires used in electronics breadboarding and the prongs happened to be just the right size. Various Internet suggestions cut the wires with a knife and twist two of the three wires together to get you back home. If I need a field repair I would use my jumper wire and wrap the loop to the plug with electricians tape.
I am including three pictures showing the cracked case of the switch, the type of jumper I used and the position of the jumper in the plug.
My bike only has 26k miles so I can recommend checking it regularly. Since a rock can crack the case and the switch costs $105 I may eventually fashion a shield for it.
The moral of this post is never be the last person to leave Shapiro’s.
Nice work. Thanks for the PSA!