Z250SL breakdown in the rain

"Get a new bike" they said. "It'll be more reliable" they said. "It won't break down, you'll be able to trust it" they said.

On the 29th of March, 6 months into my ownership of a brand spanking new (basically) Z250SL on a 66 plate with a mere 7K miles under its little wheels, right when I thought to myself "hey this is doing alright, this is probably the heaviest rain I've ridden it in and it hasn't even spluttered" I broke down, the rear sliding round a polished and diesel covered junction due to the engine braking, a mile from home with total electrical failure. Ha. Funny. The CB250 never did that even with 93K up..

I pushed it along the road to the entrance to a farm, and stared at it. Then wiggled the key a lot. Life briefly flickered, but not much of it. More wiggling and staring. It seems to be the ignition switch but there's something not quite right about it, it feels like the flickers are more to do with me wobbling the bike rather than directly wiggling the key. As I start to strip off my waterproof onesie to get to my phone to call for assistance I try one last time, and the bugger turns on and stays home. It starts and keeps running. I hurriedly re-dress and, thankfully, I make it home.

At home I still can't figure it. Sometimes there is life, sometimes nothing, but once it does turn on I can turn it off and on again as much as I like and it works every time. I fill the ignition barrel with 3-in-1 spray but it makes no difference. I leave it, out in yet more rain.. Thank goodness it's Friday.

The next day I come back and there is no life at all. No amount of wiggling or spraying can coax it into turning on. Time to investigate. The wiring from the ignition switch runs down to this connector block:

As I keep working the switch like some rabid youth I notice yellow light flickering in the block. Problem found then. A slightest tug on the wire doing the fireworks and..

I've never seen so much corrosion in wiring. Is this the special Kawasaki build quality that people used to joke about back in the eighties? Some wrestling with the wiring allows me to pull the block out..

Time to retrieve the spade connector that is still inside the block. Nurse get my tools, stat!

A bit (okay a lot) of wiggling finally frees the offending article.

I strip the wire back only to find the green rot goes far inside. I chop another bit off, but it's only marginally better. I can't lop any more off otherwise it won't want to go into the block, so bugger it! I try my best to bend the spade back into a useful shape but there's no way it'll crimp the wire a second time. Bugger it even more, where's my 60w soldering iron and proper lead solder..

With only a little bit of burning (a ball of solder even ran right into the gap under my fingernail, sob!) I ended up with this:

After crimping it flat a bit more, and stripping some of the melted insulation off, it finally went back into the connector but I have no idea how secure it is. This led to a bike that actually turned on, success!

What a horrible bodge though. A better fix would be to strip the wire back until it wasn't full of verdigris, splice a bit more wire on to the end and perhaps connect it all with a bullet connector or something. But this will do for now, it was freezing cold and wet at the time! In time I think I will fill all the connectors with ACF50 or similar to try and stop this from happening elsewhere/all over.

This Kawasaki build quality is morbidly fascinating though, I've never seen anything quite like it. Can Chinese bikes really be so much worse? They're a lot simpler for a start..