Broken

The day before Good Friday (Average Thursday?) I was out and about, having a gentle trundle around some of east Midlandshire’s finest potholes on the Ninja. I stopped at a retail park over in Netherfield to buy some supplements for Mikey because he’s an older boy and needs some help. After the transaction, I put on my gloves and helmet, sat astride the Ninja, turned the key, watched the startup readouts and LEDs do their thing, pushed the button and… Nothing. No readouts, no LEDs, no noise, no nothing. I flicked the key left then right. Readouts, LEDs, pushed the button… Nothing.

I knew it wasn’t a battery issue (despite this being a low battery symptom) because the battery is less than 6 months old. Well, you can’t bump start a 1,000cc superbike so I called the AA. They said they’d be an hour and a half, so I walked across the carpark, had a McWee, a McHot McChocolate and went back over to the seats near the bike. Obviously, I’d taken my lid off. I sat down, sipped my drink and browsed the Internet. After a while I had company. No, not the AA, it was a couple of dozen of the local young people. They chatted and joshed amongst themselves and rode pushbikes and scooters and had a great time doing young people things. A young girl sat beside me, looked at my kit and said ‘Nice helmet’ and I nearly choked on my McHot McChocolate. We had a nice chat, then she was joined by a couple of her friends. They talked about some of the boys and the girl who had admired my helmet pointed at one of the young lads and said to her friends that she’d “do him”. I looked at him and told her she could do so much better. One of her friends agreed with me. Eventually they all vanished as if it was tea time and they needed to be somewhere else.

A very long time and 3 McHot McChocolates later (and over 3 hours since I first contacted them), the AA turned up. So much for 90 minutes, eh? But the good news was the engineer is a biker. I showed him what happened, we took the bike apart, he amp tested components and diagnosed a fried solenoid. So, the solenoid being nothing more than a switch, he bridged it with a 50 amp inline fuse, turned the key, pushed the button, and the fuse blew. Major short circuit, obviamente. Probably a melted alternator, he reckoned.

Graeme (for that is his name) did amazing things with heavily machined pieces of kit in the back of his van, and built a dolly, a single motorbike trailer. We pushed the Ninja onto the trailer, he secured it, and he gave us a lift home. We unloaded, I put the bike away and said thank you to him. Graeme gave me his number because he wanted to know what the cause was. I couldn’t do much the next day because it was Good Friday. I had a conversation with a fellow biker who gave me the number of a local engineer he rated. Regardless of the Good Friday deadzone, I called him and he answered. We did the usual Q&A. He said he’d look at it but he was fully booked, but he could pick the Ninja up the following weekend. Excellent news.

The next day (Brilliant Saturday?) I rang my local Kawasaki dealer and cancelled the service appointment the Ninja was booked in for in 4 days time. Yes, oh the irony. Fast forward to today and the bike was picked up this morning. I now await the news with eager anticipation and a hungry credit card.