Solenoid stuck - bad voltage?

[FloatR]

Hey.

Today I experienced something new after all these years of riding.

I’ve been renovating a SJ650 -92 and almost everything on the ski is new.

The last parts i changed was the starter solenoid and starter motor since they both was in bad shape.

So today I wrapped everything up an fired it up. It cranked for a while and then I noticed that the battery went low on power. (I missed charging it) I tried one more crank and then I gave up.

Now to the mystery part, after I released the start button the starter kept on trying to crank everything. The scenario went in slowmo due to the lack of battery power. And before I got the chance to disconnect the negative pole on the battery a lite bit of smoke started to come from the positive pole on the battery.

I took apart the electrical box and checked that the solenoid was ok. Used the multimeter and everything seemed ok.

I’ve heard of solenoids that stucks when exposed to low voltage. Could that be the problem?

 

[SuperJet-Dave]

Weird... Could also be the start/stop switch itself. They do have a tendency to crap out, get stuck, etc. or the wiring. You might want to check the continuity of the switch (both start and stop) as well as the wiring to see if there is a short. Using a meter with an audible diode continuity setting would be easiest. Good luck

 

[FloatR]

Weird... Could also be the start/stop switch itself. They do have a tendency to crap out, get stuck, etc. or the wiring. You might want to check the continuity of the switch (both start and stop) as well as the wiring to see if there is a short. Using a meter with an audible diode continuity setting would be easiest. Good luck

Yes it’s weird

I’ve tested the start/stop continunity and everythings like it should. Lanyard in - no continunity. Lanyard out - continunity :/

 

[TheBuzzard]

I've had one do that. I thought the solenoid was bad, but I charged the battery and it never happened again.

 

[Harbor]

Was it an after market soliniod ? The 3 I bought were duds..

Not sure if lower voltage could cause excessive arc across the high current contractor of the soliniod and cause it to latch closed.

 

[FloatR]

Was it an after market soliniod ? The 3 I bought were duds..

Not sure if lower voltage could cause excessive arc across the high current contractor of the soliniod and cause it to latch closed.

Yes it was an aftermarket one. Had a new solenoid intended for a quad racer laying in the shop. But their all the same so it should work just fine.

I will go ahead and try with a fresh battery.

 

[FloatR]

So with a fresh battery in the solenoid worked fine.

But a bit cranking it still wouldn’t start so I pulled the plugs and confirmed there was spark. I could see som fluid in the fuelfilter so before I put the spark plugs in I poured some gas in the cylinders to give a bit of a push so it would start sucking fuel. After repeating this three times the ski fired up and went ”run away”. It ran for some seconds before it died. It’s been some time since i experienced the ”run away” fenomenon so I forgot to push stop and open full throttle.

Threw the hood back on and went inside for a cold beer to calm down from the fury.

Tomorrow I will start looking for air leakage and bypass the fuelsystem so it will pull fuel directly from the tank to the carb instead of running thru the filter and control.

 

[SuperJet-Dave]

Sounds simple, but you might want to also check your idle setting screw on the carb... (where the the throttle cable wire attaches to the carb).

 

[FloatR]

Sounds simple, but you might want to also check your idle setting screw on the carb... (where the the throttle cable wire attaches to the carb).

Yeah, that was the first thing that came to mind. But unfortunately that was not the case