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Unread 10-09-2008, 11:06 PM
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Smithers Smithers is offline
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Join Date: Feb 2004
Location: San Luis Obispo, CA
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About the dreaded issue - MY APRILIA TURNS OVER BUT WON'T FIRE ...

2 weekends ago I was suited up and riding with my riding crew all over the back roads in my area. It started up fine in the morning so I started my day of riding. We ride pretty quickly and stop at every single stop sign and wait to make SURE that everyone in our group is ok and accounted for before we hit the next stretch of road. Well this is a lot of stopping and starting with your engine pretty hot.

Well after a couple more stops and shutting down the bike it wouldn't start and we were out in the middle of nowhere! I was like, "WTF I thought I took care of this problem with my new Yuasa battery!". It was turning over but not firing. I had wiped the contacts clean and sprayed them with solvent when I installed the new battery just before I left for the MOTO GP of Laguna Seca in July. I had only wiped them clean and I didn't resurface them like I should have cause I was in a hurry to get to the GP that day. Also the first thing you ALWAYS want to check when trouble shooting any electrical problem is to CHECK THE GROUNDS. The electrical system can only draw as much juice from the battery as the ground connection lets it. (SEE BEGINNING OF THIS THREAD) I did this and cleaned each ground and wire brushed each ground when I rebuilt my motorcycle earlier this year so I knew that was good to go.

So what fixed my most recent problem? For me it was to really resurface the contacts for the battery. Use some emory cloth, sandpaper, wire brush... anything to get a nice shiny contact surface for mating the battery cables to the battery terminals. Get the terminal surfaces nice and raw before you put them back together. Then spray some battery terminal spray on them which keeps them from corroding. If the metal connections are left bare and exposed they will corrode and you'll start having the same problem again in time.

I'll get some pics of how mine looks soon. But for now everything seems to be firing off just fine when I hit the starter button now.
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