clutch lever" switch"

[Guest]

Greetings all,
Just finished lubing the clutch cable ('81 GS 1100) It's all back together but when I push the starter button, NOTHING. Battery is gel and fully charged. All lights on and bright.
My guess is that there's a switch somewhere that isn't activating. On this model the clutch lever must be pulled in or the bike won't start. Where is that switch??
I've looked in my factory shop manual and cannot find anything regarding this.
Any ideas? -Chris

[bwringer]

You've been looking at it already. The switch is on the underside of the clutch lever.

It's a very simple (and very badly designed) mechanism -- take off the two little screws, being careful to not lose the pieces, and see if you can clean it up and/or adjust it (if you loosen the screws, there's a little bit of adjustment slop built in). Sometimes it's easier to loosen the clutch lever clamp and rotate the whole thing on the handlebars so you're not working upside-down.

Simplest of all is to trace the wires into the headlight bucket and jumper them together. This switch is dangerously unreliable, so many of us disable it. (Of course, you have to then remember to pull in the clutch before starting, but if you can't remember that you should probably rethink motorcycling anyway.)

You can also replace the switch guts -- less than $10.