Key not “connecting”

[panamaniac]

My ‘93 800 has a new problem this year

I put my key in the ignition but the bike acts like I didn’t—no crank or anything at all. Turns out that wiggling my key a bit fixes the problem. But then on a couple rides, the bike cut out on my bc of this issue. So my current remedy is to use a bike key by itself instead of on my key ring so that there’s less weight pulling my key around. This was worked so far but I’m hoping there’s a simple fix or at least some things I can do to keep the problem from getting worse—I’m actually pretty with it as is but if it gets much worse the bike could easily strand me.

Thanks all!

[navigator]

The key and cylinder itself are mechanical, and shouldn't be the issue unless the cylinder is so loose in the housing that it is ready to fall out.
Removing the plastic back with wires from the key assembly exposes the connections which may be corroded. They can be cleaned with a pencil eraser.

[Herb]

The ignition switch on my 1400 wore out. The inside of the housing was worn and loose, I could wiggle the switch with it in the run position and the ignition would go on and off.

I was 250 miles from home when it quit while running down the road. I found that if I got it turned on and pulled the key out it would run until I hit a bad bump and then it would quit. The bike dying in the middle of a turn was a scary situation.

Pulled the switch and cut the wires off, stripped the ends, and wrapped them together until I got home. It was a sunday evening and nowhere to get any parts so I wired in a toggle switch as a temp fix because I needed it for work the next day.

The next Saturday I went to a MC salvage yard and bought an ignition switch off of a wrecked dirt bike. I built a bracket to locate the switch up to the middle of the handlebars and wired the switch to the original wires, extending the wires out and taking the park position out of the equation.

Now the switch is up where it is much easier to use.