Intermittent Starting

[emt200x]

Ok, I recently ha an issue with my 2007 GZ250 that I wanted to share here in case the info can be of use to others.

After winter the battery was dead/dying. I had to jump start it for about a week before replacing the battery. During that week the neutral light was going in and out. Sometimes it would come on in neutral, sometimes not. On Friday of that week, I went to jump it, and nothing happened. I was scared. I knew the battery was dying so I replaced it, but the fact that it didn't fire up when I tried to jump it the last time still lingered in the back of my head. Something still wasn't right. New battery did nothing. So a buddy of mine came over to the house to take a look at it. We took that tank off and proceeded to poke around, ensuring electrical connections were clean/tight, etc. Out of nowhere, the neutral light comes back on at this point, and the push start fires it up. *Celebrations* It continued to fire up most days. One day it didn't, so I jiggled some of the wires, pushed the button again and all was well - fired up. At some point I noticed that the kickstand was also killing the bike when it was in neutral. Not good. That combined with the intermittent neutral light made me think that there was some kind of short somewhere on one of the sensors or something. Maybe that's what was causing it to 'not start' - the bike was in neutral, all was good, but maybe it 'thought' it was in first or one of the other safety switches was not letting it start. I finally took it in to the shop, and it turns out it was the neutral light bulb itself. I guess the connections (in the bulb) were strung up just enough to start sometimes and light up at others. Not sure, but replacing the bulb solved it all. Starts every time, light works, kickstand no longer kills it in neutral. *Celebrations*