Pause when you press the start button.

I have a 83 xj650 that has an odd problem, or maybe not so odd to more seasoned riders. When I press the start button I can count to 5 before the engine turns over. It starts just fine, but I would like to take care of the odd pause. Any ideas?

Thanks.

Jim

 

-the button itself.
-wiring, including fusebox, ground straps, battery connections, etc.
-the solenoid.
-the starter.

Or any combination of the above.

Pretty much in that order. On one of my 550s it was a combination of the button itself and the solenoid. (After fixing the fusebox.)

 

Jim, you have a classic resistance issue going on there. As cited by our esteem collegues, it could be anything from the button itself to the starter. But with most mobile electronics, start simple and move on from there. The first part to test would be the starter button itself. Pull the seat or whatever to expose all your relays and identify the starter relay/solenoid. Pull the plug off the relay. Hook up a multimeter to the appropriate lead, found by testing each until you get some feedback from one of them. Keep in mind that the circuit may be a negative trigger; in other words, when the starter button is pushed, it completes the ground side of the circuit. I am not sure on that model. If you test each lead and when you push the starter button and it doesn't show 12+ volts but rather, shows 12+ volts which disappears when you hit the button it's a negative trigger system, for lack of a better term. If that's the case, I'd go right to all the grounds first and check them. In my experience working in mobile electronics on everything from motorcycles to Fire Apparatus and Ambulances, 90% of weird stuff is a ground problem.

If you get B+ voltage at the starter relay/solenoid, try this: use an appropriate sized jumper from the battery to the post on the starter itself and just touch it. If the starter jumps to life, it's not the starter but in that circuit. And if that's the case, I'd go right for the starter relay/solenoid.

Considering a relay is simply an electrical switch, and these old bikes have ancient relay technology, the relay contacts themselves may be burned and there's your resistance issue. To prove that out, hook up your multimeter to the starter solenoid output. I'd bet that it reads zero until the starter relay/solenoid finally makes enough contact to pass through enough voltage to make the connection.

But as I said above, the relay/solenoid is totally dependent upon getting the appropriate signal from the starter switch so it will close the circuit. That switch is low current "throwing" the relay and once it triggers the thing it draws high current to crank the motor through the larger wires from the battery.

It's a matter of tracing, again, the simplest to the more complex. Grounds, switch, solenoid, starter. That's how I'd go.