Help.....idiot at work!

Okay here goes. I'm the proud new owner of a naked curvy SV650 and love it, however. I've just replaced the levers as the previous owner, god bless her was colour blind. Brake lever went on no problem. Clutch went on no problem. Problem only came when I went to start the engine. NOTHING!!!! Messed about with it for ages adjusting the clutch and swearing fluently. The best I've got is pulling in clutch, press the starter and then quickly engaging the clutch and disengaging it and hey presto it fires up. How do I sort it so I don't have to p**s about with the clutch lever every time. PLease help this mechanical idiot before the wife puts me out of my misery. Cheers folks.

Originally Posted by xlewdx

Okay here goes. I'm the proud new owner of a naked curvy SV650 and love it, however. I've just replaced the levers as the previous owner, god bless her was colour blind. Brake lever went on no problem. Clutch went on no problem. Problem only came when I went to start the engine. NOTHING!!!! Messed about with it for ages adjusting the clutch and swearing fluently. The best I've got is pulling in clutch, press the starter and then quickly engaging the clutch and disengaging it and hey presto it fires up. How do I sort it so I don't have to p**s about with the clutch lever every time. PLease help this mechanical idiot before the wife puts me out of my misery. Cheers folks.

That my friend is a safety thing Suzuki installed. There is a little switch on the clutch leaver housing so you have to have the clutch in to start it.

I found it annoying as hell too, so I actually overrode mine by removing the two wires that go to the leaver handlebar clamp and ‘shorting’ them out (cut them and twisted the bare wires together, then taped up). Now as far as the bike is concerned it thinks the leaver is pulled in al the time.

Like I said it is a safety feature, so nothing wrong with your bike. If you want to override it then do as I did and you are away

[Speedy]

Have the Curvies got inhibitor switches on the clutch lever/stand/gearbox?
If it has,I'd be checking those.Did it start ok before you fitted the clutch lever?

The bike was working fine until I tinkered around with it. Really would like to short the wires but if I can't fit a clutch lever without this hassle if I do that, knowing my luck, the bike will blow up!!
The switches at the clutch lever are fine I just don't get how it's happened.
Thank again.

Have you got the clutch cable set right?
I can't be sure from your post but are you putting it in gear to get it started?

[Spiderman]

sounds to me like the clutch saftey switch.

Try holding the clutch lever in and then start the bike. You can over-ride it as said before.

You may have inadvertantly not engaged it when you put the new lever on. Its in the gray housing and you have to look up at it to see if you engaged it with the lever.

[northwind]

I had a set of pattern levers, and the clutch lever often wouldn't hit the switch... You had to pull it upwards (or push it down, i forget) to make it fire. Mechanics hated it

Okay....so there's a safety switch in the clutch housing is there?
Think you may have hit the nail on the head there. Unfortunately it's now late and I've already hit the whiskey bottle. I'll give that a look tomorrow and really appreciate the help. THanks again and I'll let you know how it goes, cheers.

I finally got it. That bloody wonderful Suzuki safety feature was the culprit. I hadn't located the lever correctly in the clutch housing to incorporate the switch.
Big thanks to everyone who replied to my post I really appreciated it loads.

you can turn the clutch sensor switch thing round in its mounting to disable it

I had to do this to get a gsxr clutch lever to work (with some minor hacksawing) at the weekend