My bike won't start!

After about a month of riding my 1986 Suzuki GS 400S I hit my first official snag. After about a half hour ride I parked the bike and left it for about 20 minutes. When I came back it was dead, no juice, nothing. I managed to bump start it and got it home. Now I needed to figure out what the problem was!

I encourage you at this point to actually troubleshoot before you start buying parts. I immediately assumed it must have been the battery. This was also fueled by wishful thinking because I don't know much about electrical and I certainly didn't feel confident doing any electrical work on the bike.

After replacing the battery I quickly discovered that that wasn't the issue. I turned to the GS Resources and discovered the "Stator Papers". I followed the step by step tutorial on how to test the ENTIRE charging system and discovered that my regulator/rectifier was fried!


Waited a couple weeks for the part to show up and the bike is good as new again.

Here's a link for the Stator Papers if you're in the same boat. It's recommended to do these checks periodically to proactively catch some issues before you find yourself dead at the side of the road. The Stator Papers

The GS Resources

One of the most useful websites I've found so far is the GS Resources, http://thegsresources.com

This is a great forum and the members contributing really know what they're talking about. It was through this site that I finally found a Haynes manual from the UK which covers the 400S (they call it a 400E I believe. I've added links for both the GS resources and the Haynes manual to the links list here.