I rode the bike to a friend's house yesterday afternoon but during the ride the bike started bucking. It just started loosing power, sputtering, and backfiring before suddenly regaining all power and riding like normal again. I spoke to a friend before leaving....attempting to leave that is....who said my kickstand switch might be acting up. After letting the bike warm up, I put the kickstand up causing the stand light to disappear and dropped it into first gear. The bike just shut off as if the stand was still down. I put the bike back into neutral and restarted the bike which ran great. It doesn't misfire, sputter, backfire, etc. and revs great.

We pulled the kickstand switch which appears to be working correctly as the contacts are in good shape and the prongs are all in good shape. We reinstalled the switch and the bike would still not start with the stand up and in gear. We unplugged the switch and started the bike with the stand up and down in neutral but as soon as it's dropped into gear the bike shuts off. We tried jumping and pins to "open and close" the circuit but still had no luck. The switch has three prongs and we tried all combinations, still nothing.

I found out that if I have the stand up, and rev the bike up slightly I can get it into gear. However, the bike then runs like absolute dog crap. It shuts down 1 to 2 cylinders, spits out raw fuel, backfires, etc. As soon as the bike is put back into neutral all problems disappear. It just makes no sense to me. Every other bike I've seen only had two prongs on the switch to simply open and close the circuit. So now I have a bike stranded at my friends house 11 miles away but atleast it's in a garage. Anyone have any ideas or ever had this happen? I'm stumped on this one.

 

 

What about the clutch switch on the lever.

 

I found out it was the neutral position selector sensor that gave up the ghost. It's located just to the left of the front sprocket and looks like a mini spark plug. I just unpluged the connector and grounded it to the frame in order to get it home. The bike runs fine like before but the neutral light remains on. I have the part on order for like $14.00. The kickstand switch wasn't the problem as it was functioning properly. If the neutral switch wasn't the problem my next guess would have been the clutch safety switch.