at the first of the month I sold the GFs first KLX250sf to a friends wife. Today she called me saying she had filled it up with gas and then could not start the bike. I had her try starting it in reserve and on with and without the choke and also cranking it while slowly pulling out the choke also switching into neutral just becuase.

I finaly decided to ride over to the gas station and try and sort it out(nice thing about an island nothing is that far away) I cranked it and played with it and it was not even trying to fire. I steped back to regroup and noticed that the red kill switch above the starter was half way between run and kill. Moved it to run and she fired right up. I double checked and was able to replicate it on the KLX I was rideing. I guess the switch is double pole with one pole for starter solonoid and other shutsdown the spark.

Thought I would post so all are aware of the possibility.

Cheers Jim

 

The kill switch deal has caused me more issues over the years than all other things put together. I never use it just for that reason but anytime someone looks at the bike they want to play with the switches and it still bites me when I least expect it.

 

When i was down in FL, the guy i was riding with, former member from here was crashing alot in the sand, and sand got in the kill switch and wouldnt let it come back out, took a good 10 mins of fooling with to get it to pop back out.

 

I have to agree with you, always an issue. You may hit it by mistake or some one leans on the bike when were taking a break, go to fire it up and wont start. You start f-ing with everything and, duh, the kill switch is on

 

Its also a funny trick to play on someone... or turn thier gas off... hehe.

 

I have had the kill switch bite me before but it was allways in the complete kill position. In other words it wuold not even turn over when the start button was hit. This time it would turn over but not fire. Also it was not obviously in the kill position.
Sometimes I wonder what the downside of eliminating it would really be. If I lay the bike down I think I could easily enough turn the key to kill the engine.

 

I think the kill switch is there for those times that the key seems just so far away. Riding through deep water and you go over, for example. Kill it before it drowns. I don't recall exactly what all was going on but there have been a couple of times that I just didn't have enough hands to do everything so it was real nice to able to just KILL it. And some of those times because I so rarely use the kill I gave myself the "WTF why won't it start".

 

If you always use the kill switch, it's a non-issue.

 

Except when you then forget to turn the key off, leaving the light on, draining the battery.

 

I'd rather pull the spark plug wire off with my bare hands than use the kill switch.