Solenoid Connector

[rbt1548]

With the bike loaded I set off for a couple of weeks with relatives to the west coast of Scotland, I filled up at a petrol station about 1 mile from home, tried to start the bike, 2000 M900Sie, and it wouldn't start, I had lights, horn, everything else, but not even a click. I tried connections and turning handle bars etc. but couldn't get it to start so I decided use the breakdown service that is with my insurance as I didn't fancy pushing home, mostly uphill, with the bike loaded.

Anyway nice man in a AA van appeared after about 40 mins, and we went through the connectors and fuses again, eventually, by chance, pulling and re connecting the 2 pin connector to the solenoid, and it fired, I had pulled the connector prior but maybe just hadn't re seated it properly.

What I did notice however was the leads to the connector seemed to have been wrapped at sometime in insulating tape so I decided once I got home I would have a look at it.

This morning I opened it up and found it chopped and the wires connected as the picture below, now it's obviously not very clever and a bit manky so I'm going to redo it and heat shrink it , but I was wondering about the bare wire with the diode, is that a standard fitment?, as it does seem a bit Heath Robinsonish just stuck there for a factory fitment. I have tried to find a pic online to see if it's correct but I can't seem to find one.

Thanks