Bonneville America Forums Forums Technical Forums General Tech Ignition switch

So my 2011 america will not start. We assumed it was the ignition switch but my husband took apart the ignition switch and tested, when he found it was okay he re-installed it on the bike. The bike would turn on but he did not attempt to start the engine. Today I tried to start it but as soon as I hit the button to start the engine everything died. All the electronics went dead and now nothing will work so we are back to where we started a week ago. Is it probably the ignition switch or is something else wrong? We are in a time crunch because the registration is up on the 15th of this month and I have to go get it inspected to renew. Any ideas or suggestions would be appreciated.

if it helps he tested it using a multimeter and a wiring diagram for the switch. We also just noticed that even though the electronics appear to be not working when the bike is switched on the headlight does still come on but the indicators/milage on the speedometer are still not working.

In the end it's always the battery, especially when it comes to electronic ignition and fuel injection. Check your battery connections, measure the battery voltage, check the main fuse (especially for corrosion). Do you have another battery you could sub in? Many times a battery wil read fine on a meter but not really have a full charge; no need to get into the chemistry here but it can fool you.

Thanks oldroadie for the advice. He hooked up a battery from his motorcycle and everything seems to be working now. Glad it wasn't a $200 ignition switch.

you da man Ed!

Lucky guess. All the same the fuel pump combined with electronic ignition really requires a good healthy battery and that's the place to start looking. Batteries can really fool you by reading good on a meter but lacking enough current to do anything. I just replaced one that read 12.8v resting but dropped immediately to 11v when you tried spin the starter twice. It fooled both of my chargers, too, but once I had the meter across the posts when I was thumbing the starter it gave up the truth. I bought it, brought it home, topped off the charge with my battery tender and then struggled for a day before I realized it was bad right off the shelf.

It's also the reason I don't think you could kickstart one of these back to life with a dead battery, it would take a superhuman effort to spin that rotor fast enough to generate the voltage required to tickle the igniter. Old points bikes could get up around 7v and fire. I'd bet our engines need more like 10.5 or 11. But that's a guess and I haven't seen that documented for proof.