• Hi everyone,

    As you all know, Coffee (Dean) passed away a couple of years ago. I am Dean's ex-wife's husband and happen to have spent my career in tech. Over the years, I occasionally helped Dean with various tech issues.

    When he passed, I worked with his kids to gather the necessary credentials to keep this site running. Since then (and for however long they worked with Coffee), Woodschick and Dirtdame have been maintaining the site and covering the costs. Without their hard work and financial support, CafeHusky would have been lost.

    Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been working to migrate the site to a free cloud compute instance so that Woodschick and Dirtdame no longer have to fund it. At the same time, I’ve updated the site to a current version of XenForo (the discussion software it runs on). The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.

    Unfortunately, the new software version doesn’t support importing the old site’s styles, so for now, you’ll see the XenForo default style. This may change over time.

    Coffee didn’t document the work he did on the site, so I’ve been digging through the old setup to understand how everything was running. There may still be things I’ve missed. One known issue is that email functionality is not yet working on the new site, but I hope to resolve this over time.

    Thanks for your patience and support!

No start, no neutral?

RidingDonkeys

RidingDonkeys

Husqvarna
Pro Class
I'm trying to leave work and the bike won't start. It appears as if the bike is not recognizing neutral. I can't get a neutral light, and it won't even fire when the clutch is pulled in. voltage on the battery is good. No ews warning present. I'm baffled. anybody run into this before?
 
If it thinks it is in gear, then you should be able to still start with the clutch in and the kickstand up.

I also got hung up one time when I didn't realize the red kill switch above the starter will stay pushed in when pressed and remain in kill mode until you actually push it again to pop it out.
 
Hasenpfeffer is the winner. I originally tried that, but it did not work. After the battery reset, I forgot to try it again. It started. Now to figure out why this happened...
 
RidingDonkeys said:
So I set out on a long ride home with several stops along the way. I cannot seem to recreate the original problem.
Click to expand...


It was the kickstand switch which was the culprit right? Moving the stand up and down once or twice has probably dislodged whatever it was that was causing it to stick - a bit of road gunk perhaps. I wouldn't be too concerned that it won't do it again on cue.
 
nev.. said:
It was the kickstand switch which was the culprit right? Moving the stand up and down once or twice has probably dislodged whatever it was that was causing it to stick - a bit of road gunk perhaps. I wouldn't be too concerned that it won't do it again on cue.
Click to expand...

I suspect not, because even if that switch was malfunctioning, the bike still would have started in neutral. Never having had a bike with that safety switch on it before, that was the very first thing I looked at when it wouldn't start. I disconnected it and everything was clean and neat, as I had just gone through that when I installed the skid plate about 500mi ago. The dielectric grease was still there, and all was well.

The failure was affirmatively a failure to recognize neutral. I'm guessing the sensor fritzed out on me momentarily. I didn't have the "click" that Next had. I had absolutely nothing. I never even could the the neutral light to come on, even though I was clearly in neutral, and had pushed my bike several feet to prove it. I even dropped it back in gear and pushed it a bit thinking it might be the crankshaft position sensor.

All this talk of "sensors" is making me frustrated. I need a beer and some quality time with my old Triumphs. This is why I hate modern motorcycles. Give me carbs and a set of Whitworth tools and I'm a happy man. :cheers:
 
RidingDonkeys said:
I suspect not, because even if that switch was malfunctioning, the bike still would have started in neutral. Never having had a bike with that safety switch on it before, that was the very first thing I looked at when it wouldn't start. I disconnected it and everything was clean and neat, as I had just gone through that when I installed the skid plate about 500mi ago. The dielectric grease was still there, and all was well.

The failure was affirmatively a failure to recognize neutral. I'm guessing the sensor fritzed out on me momentarily. I didn't have the "click" that Next had. I had absolutely nothing. I never even could the the neutral light to come on, even though I was clearly in neutral, and had pushed my bike several feet to prove it. I even dropped it back in gear and pushed it a bit thinking it might be the crankshaft position sensor.

All this talk of "sensors" is making me frustrated. I need a beer and some quality time with my old Triumphs. This is why I hate modern motorcycles. Give me carbs and a set of Whitworth tools and I'm a happy man. :cheers:
Click to expand...
I'm with you Donkeys, happened to me last week, dash goes vvvvvroom blink blink, press the button zilch, WTF. Go thru all the stuff you did and turned it off, made a cup of special Mocha Coffee, no Mocha cake at this time, calmly approached the bike and did what I have done for the last 8000ks and FMe, it started. Woodsie is on to these Italian stallions, always have strong Mocha coffee or cake on hand because you or the bike may be a bit dozey.
 
"The failure was affirmatively a failure to recognize neutral."

If the failure was a neutral switch, why wouldn't it start with the clutch pulled in?
 
I'm postulating on this, but a 1968 Triumph with no sensors will attempt to start in gear. The starter fires, and the bike lurches forward.

A modern bike with sensors will not fire when in gear unless the clutch is engaged. The bike has to sense this somehow. I'm guessing this is through a neutral switch/sensor. If that were malfunctioning, the starter wouldn't fire in neutral or in gear with the clutch engaged.
 
I am not so sure.
I know once I disabled the clutch switch and the kickstand switch on my last bike it would start in gear when the neutral light was not on.
The neutral switch was still intact and operating, I did not disable it in any way.

Before disabling those switches it would start with the kick stand down ONLY when the neutral light was on.
It would start in gear with the clutch pulled ONLY when the kick stand was up.

When you had the issue with the netural light not coming on, did you try to start it with the clutch pulled AND kickstand up, or just the clutch pulled?
 
Ogre_fl said:
I am not so sure.
I know once I disabled the clutch switch and the kickstand switch on my last bike it would start in gear when the neutral light was not on.
The neutral switch was still intact and operating, I did not disable it in any way.

Before disabling those switches it would start with the kick stand down ONLY when the neutral light was on.
It would start in gear with the clutch pulled ONLY when the kick stand was up.

When you had the issue with the netural light not coming on, did you try to start it with the clutch pulled AND kickstand up, or just the clutch pulled?
Click to expand...

As embarrassing as this may be, I tried taking off one day and every time I put it in gear, it died. I thought the bike had a power issue. Then I put up the kickstand and all was good.
 
I did have the kickstand up for a good portion of the original troubleshooting. I was also pushing the bike around bouncing from 1st to neutral to 2nd trying to get it to recognize neutral. When I can't seem to find neutral on some of my older bikes, often times giving them a push with the clutch engaged and then releasing it so that the transmission turns in 1st/2nd will make it easier to find neutral. I tried this in the parking lot while troubleshooting. Of course, after each attempt, I would try to start it too. So I'd be willing to bet that I tried to start it at least 5 times with the kickstand up and in gear.
 
Got me a couple of times with this one ! Only just the opposite- slowing down to a crawl feet on the pegs and hit the throttle to take off only to find you are in false neutral with no indicator light and about fall over-always laughing and having fun though !
 
Might be worth eliminating that switch anyway. Then if you have continued problems you have at least eliminated that as a possibility.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top