New member with an electrical/starter question!

[FsuBiker]

Hey everyone,

I just purchased a 2005 Gz250 yesterday and I am pretty excited about using it for commuting to school and around town. I'm a Mechanical Engineering student at FSU and i've been riding Atv's, dirtbikes, and regular bikes since I was little.

Anyways, the starter on the 250 I just picked up doesn't work and I'm not quite sure why. Nothing happens at all when you hit the starter button. When I picked up the bike I was able to bump start it and it ran fine (this was after hooking the battery up to a trickle charger for a few minutes). Now, a day later, I tried to bump start it but I couldn't get it running. I did a little bit of research on this forum and it seems as though faulty contacts in the electrical interlock system could be the problem so today I sprayed down the contacts for the clutch, kill switch, starter, and neutral light indicator (I think, connection right in-front of the front sprocket?) but still no luck. I did check the battery today, however, and the voltage while not running today was down at 7V. Also, even while running yesterday, the neutral light did not light up in neutral.

Will this bike run at all if the battery is weak? Does the neutral light not being on in neutral mean that the contacts are bad there and that could be causing the starter to not work? What kind of trouble shooting procedures do you guys recommend from here?

Let me know if I should move this post over to a different section.

Thanks in advance!
Greg