I was concerned about the 0.5V drop to the ignition so I made up a couple of jumper wires using crocodile clips I had lying around. That gave me everything the battery could give. It didn't make any difference to starting.
On a side note, if I'd realised how easy it is to "hot wire" a bike I think I'd have bought bigger chains over the years.
The main link to the live wire in the harness from the (non-original) fuse carrier looked like this.
So I chopped it off. I replaced the bullet connector with a blue ring-terminal and connected direct to the M6 post on what I presume is the starter solenoid.
The fuse was 15amp so I changed it to the correct 20amp one.
I'm running unsuppressed plugs and they are brand new so I checked out the suppressed caps which I understand can degrade over time. They both ohmed out at 460 ohms. 500 ohms is the expected value so I was happy with this. Chopped 10mm off the copper cored cabled and re-screwed on the HT caps.
Took the coils off and cleaned up a bit of the frame, remaking the earth.
Boyer Bransden had responded to my email saying that half a volt drop would not be expected to cause a problem. Fair play to them. I got the reply to my email the next day and I bought the system over 10 years ago.
I was confident that the battery was OK but on pulling it out I noticed buckled plates.
So I popped along to the bike shop and got it tested. The guy shook his head and pronounced it dead.
Boyer Bransden had responded to my email saying that half a volt drop would not be expected to cause a problem. Fair play to them. I got the reply to my email the next day and I bought the system over 10 years ago.
I was confident that the battery was OK but on pulling it out I noticed buckled plates.
So I popped along to the bike shop and got it tested. The guy shook his head and pronounced it dead.
So I fitted a new AGM battery and it started from cold on the second kick.
I'm just documenting this in case it helps someone coming on later. None of the changes I made fixed the fault, though they all needed doing. It was the new battery which was the key change.
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