Naked curvy electrical funnies

Hello all,

I've been having right old time with the SV recently.
Running like a dream all summer until one day last week when at a red light, the bike suddenly cut out and all the lights went out.
About 2 seconds later the ignition lights all came back and the bike fired up again.

Everything looked fine apart from now, the speedo wasn't working.
Rev counter was fine, mileometer in the middle of the speedo was counting up properly, just the speedo needle not budging from 0.
Odd... so searching here brings me to think that the speedo sensor is faulty.

On my way back from work later that day, halfway through my journey, the rev counter goes haywire for a second or two, settles down again, and then the speedo starts working again!

Now everything looks fine again, until a few days later when getting the bike out to go to work.
Key in, lights on, hit the starter, and then it dies. It looks like a knackered fuse, so pop the seat, open the fusebox and all springs back to life.
Bike now starts. Try a few times over without a problem.

Then later in the evening at work, same problem again. Rectified by poking the fusebox.

The last part seems to be a loose connection with the fusebox, but could that also be attributed to the speedo problems?
Is there some other common part of the wiring that could have caused these funnies?

Reading through old posts there has been mention starter relay wiring.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[timwilky]

Starting point is examine the wiring loom, especially where it goes behind the seat screws, it regularly chaffs there and causes shorts, remove the seat and the short is removed. all OK for a while and whoops here we go again.

Thanks Tim. I'll have a look this morning.

[jambo]

Check the connections to the battery terminals, and from there to the starter relay, and main earth strap which goes to the right hand side engine case are all tight.

Also have a look under the tank, just behind the head stock, for a green connector which takes the main loom forward to the instruments, this can get corroded and cause some pretty funky behavior. I believe this also carries the connection for the ignition switch back to the main loom too.

Jambo

Thanks for all the help. Once I get more than 5 minutes away from work I'll have a good look.