How to Start an SV...

when it doesn't want to.

The simple answer is that you can't. It'll start when it's good and ready.

If you refer back you'll notice a mention of this problem in the Ride to Cornwall at Soltice Services on the A303, it's happened once or twice more, however due to the great British Summer, I assumed it was just water getting into the ignition/starter switch. On Thursday however, it was dry, and the loud silence once again accompanied the starter button. I left it a while, nothing. Over the space of 4 hours it didn't start once. Eventually I called the recovery company, who unusually sent a guy who knew what a motorbike was, rather than someone in a flatbed truck expecting to see a Ford Fiesta broken at the side of the road.

Naturally the bike was so fearful of this that it decided to fire up first time when he arrived. I reassured him that the bike really wasn't starting earlier, and he seemed to believe me. He found a botched clutch switch override from a previous owner, and we assumed that this was the cause of the issue. Despite the fact that the bike was obviously working, he offered to take me to BAT, for a warranty repair job, and off we went. We had an hour to cover the 13miles, but through London traffic it was touch and go, we arrived right at the last moment and wheeled in. Before even hearing the recovery guys findings they all said "Clutch Switch". So I felt quietly confident that they were right.

Fast forward to Saturday morning and I picked up the bike. I got as far as my parents house trouble free, but it wouldn't start once there. Another frantic phone call to BAT and it was decided to pinch the solenoid from a brand new SV in the showroom, and Spidermonkey would fit it at his house on Sunday morning. The bike behaved for the rest of the weekend, and once the new solenoid was fitted it carried on, so fingers crossed it's solved. The solenoid is a little square box that lives behind the right hand side panel, under the front seat if you ever have this problem and need to fix it, but check your clutch switch first.

Intermittent problems are so hard to pin down, so there's no way BAT could've known about it. If the bike started everytime they tried, they'd never have known there was a problem there; and they've been superb with helping to fix it as soon as possible, so again, all credit to them for working so quickly on the machine!