Jump Start

[rswebscan]

[okaugust]

When we moved from a house to a townhouse, we moved three bikes, including my daughter's older Ninja 250. While it sat in my mother-in-laws garage for storage for a couple of months, the battery drained. We needed to start it, and for the life of me I can't remember why using the charger wasn't an option, but Mike was insistent we could jump start it. My son was there, and Mike got on the bike and had my son push him from behind until after a few tries he was able to pop the clutch and get it going. Randy was never a fit kid and had asthma, so Mike, without telling him what to expect, was getting frustrated and in dad fashion yelled back at him, "push it like you've got a pair!" so Randy did. Then he promptly had an asthma attack and threw up.

Ah, those great family memories.

[sloowpoke]

This is why I rode shovel head harleys up to the turn of the century. They had kick starters as a backup for the electric start. Of course, my 1982 sturgis was the last shovel head made and I put 285,000 miles on it before I'd had enough of doing a ring & valve job every 40,000 miles. In my mid 60's, I pushed my kawasaki 3 miles before I found a hill steep enough to coast down to use the clutch to bump start it. After that, I made a light set of jumper cables so I could add some charge to the bike battery from a car, but never used them. In my 70's I started carrying a lithium jump starter, which I've actually used one time. I'm far too old and tired to even think about tryiing to jump on a moving bike.

I still have enough flexability in my hips to swing my 26" leg over the gear bag on the passenger seat (at least ten inches higher than the rider seat), but that's when both the bike and I are standing still.

[_Will_]

I tried that with my FZR 600 years back when I had less money and more problems. After becoming exhausted, nearly sending the bike down the street without me. and making a general fool of myself in front of the neighborhood; I gave up and went inside, called in for the day.

[Longboardr]

When I was younger, dumber and poorer I bump started my Nighthawk for two years, the starter had gone out.

As I remember it I'd run, put my left leg on the left peg then throw my leg over the bike. Thankfully I haven't had to try this trick on the FZ1, but then again I own a car now too

[oldjeep]

Funny, this came up last week in the FJR forum. Can't say that I have ever push started a bike, and the last car I recall push starting (with help) was a POC that I owned in high school 30+ years ago.

I guess if I were to try it I would consider right foot on left peg as the hop on to start it and then get the clutch and brake in immediately so the bike can be mounted normally while stopped.

[isleoman]

So I pulled over for a break a couple of days ago. Used a bad habit of putting the side stand down to kill the motor. Why? It allows me to leave both hands on the bars till the bike is on the side stand, then I just have to remember to turn the key to off. Like I said bad habit as I could do pretty much the same with the kill switch...... but you still need to remember to turn the key to off.

Back to the tale........I forgot to shut the key off leaving the bike with lights on (Gen 1) for about 10 minutes before I noticed during my break. Nothing new for this geezer and the bike started right up,

As I got my gear back on I couldn't remember ever push jump starting my Gen 1. So I thought this might be a useful training exercise for if it ever does happen. How hard can it be.

Get off the bike and turn on the key and put it in neutral. With all my gear on including ......heavy gloves and glove liners, leather jacket, riding pants, moto boots, and helmet. I started pushing the bike down a very slight grade when it dawned on me that throwing my leg over a stationary Gen 1 is doable, but not exactly easy , uh oh. I do a sort of hop, skip and jump to get right leg up and over the seat and in a position that looked like someone coming off a bike during a high side... sorta helmet down... arse up, levitating......that's when my heavy gloves covered the front brake lever causing full stop bringing my groin crashing down on the back of the tank.

Didn't go down thankfully.

Being four hours from home I thought it best to quit "training".

Thinking about it on the way home. I clearly needed to take the gloves off. If it were a level area that required getting off the bike to push I should have tried to get my left foot onto the left peg and then throw the other leg over and jump it after sitting down. I've seen some sit side saddle instead of throwing leg over.

The other option is jumping the bike while running beside the bike and then pulling in the clutch before you get dragged down the road.

Any insight on jumping a street bike and not crushing your nads?