Miss-firing Troubleshooting help

Hey guys,

The 81 Maxim has just started acting up. Here's the symptoms..

It first started with what seemed just an electrical failure - bike was running then just died, I had lights and instruments etc but the start button didn't respond. This happened to me twice and after 3 or 4 seconds it fired back up.

I left it in the garage for two days and when I came to look at it again it had the same issue until I took the tank off and then, again it fired up. Now since then it hasn't done this but it's running really bad. It's actually fine in neutral, rev's perfect but as soon as I start riding it's like there's a miss-fire, power-loss then sudden burst of power, just randomly.

My thoughts are leaning towards the solenoid. It can take a long time to try and start once left sat for more than a day and I thinking these might have gotten wornout? Any thoughts or pointers would be appreciated.

Thanks
R./

 

Have you checked your battery connections and/or battery? I don't think a faulty solenoid would cause misfires.

 

Battery is almost brand new AGM - it's solid and the connections are good.

 

There is a ground connection underneath the left side cover ( opposite side of battery) - look at it.

 

I've looked over the connections here - everything going to the ignition seems fine. I'm going to have to start tracing it from the start switch with a MM a guess

 

The way I understand it, the solenoid is involved only when you start the bike, not when it runs.

 

I think I've got it sorted - looks to have been a dodgy connector between the kill-switch and harness again. Re-terminated that and it's working fine right now - took it around the block and no issues so far - touch wood. I'm going to take a longer ride this evening and we will see what happens.

My thought process around the solenoids was that it was proving very difficult to start and felt like they weren't building up enough charge to dump down and then maybe interfering with current flow after starting - looks like maybe the fact that the connector from the kill-switch was only touching on two strands of wire probably causing current fluctuation from that point on even before. Just theory right now. I probably should have tested this with my MM but when you're troubleshooting sometimes it's just a case of fix something and see.