I try to fire her up and all I hear is a click and sometimes a high pitch screach sound. Bad starter?

yeah, either the starter or the battery is dead...maybe a bad connection too

I feel your pain.  Mine won't start either.

Quote from: MicroHardI try to fire her up and all I hear is a click and sometimes a high pitch screach sound. Bad starter?

It's most likely your battery.

With a set of auto jumper cables:
1) Put the bike in neutral and pop the seat.
2) Have a friend hold the clamps on one end of the jumper cable apart while you attach the clamps on the other end to a car battery.
3) Have the friend touch the clamps they're holding to the (appropriate) terminals on the motorcycle battery.
4) Turn on the ignition, hold in the clutch and hit the starter button.

If the bike starts right up then you've eliminated everything but the battery.

Detach the jumper cables in reverse order.

Note that you can't just clip the positive jumper to the GS500 battery and step back.  At least, I have had trouble connecting the cables to the GS without having the positive cable dangerously close to the bike frame.  This makes it difficult for me to jump-start the bike without help.

It can be done with just one person, but be careful.

Also, if your battery is that dead, you might not want to start it right up;
the bike will try its darndest to charge the battery in a hurry, which isn't good for the battery.  It's best to put the battery on a tender overnight first.

But hey, when the sun is out, that's no time to be saying "Hm, I think I'll plug in the charger..."   so I understand that sometimes you just gotta jump start it and go.  If you do jump a low battery, then try riding one gear lower than usual, so that the engine revs a little higher than usual, to get the battery charged.

I've jumped my GS solo.  it is a bit tricky, and of three sets of cables in my garage, only one set had small enough clips to be safe.  I ultimately unscrewed each contact screw from the battery a turn or two and clipped the cables over the screw-heads.  worked like a charm.


Be sure if you use Kerry's car-jump suggestion to do it with the car engine OFF.  Your battery will draw the current it needs, but a car alternator can force too much amperage and possibly hurt your battery (so I've heard)  

Well I wouldnt think it was the battery since it runs if I ride it down my street and roll start it. If it was the battery would it not run after that? But I will still try to jump start it with my car in the mourning.

Once the bike is running the battery is mostly superfluous.  As long as the alternator is working properly it generates enough electricity (depending on the the engine RPMs) to run the bike AND charge the battery with "the leftovers".  Cars work the same way.

I've read about racers who toss the battery on their bikes to save on weight.  The downer to this approach is that they have to provide some way to start the bike - but once it's started their "total loss" electrical system runs the bike just fine.

In short, YES - your battery could still be "toast".

Yes the car should be off for jumping.... The regulator can't handle the output of a cars active charging system......

Here I found a decent page on jumpstarting a motorcycle....

Jumpstarting

well, not many will toss the battery, but often they will yank the generator rotor off the crank and pull the windings out of the left cover. this is less weight the bike carrys, less weight the crank swings and less drag on crank from fighting  magnetic drag of charging. they run what is refered too as total loss ignition. they put chargers on the battery while in the pits, once the bike starts it doesnt take much juice to run an engine.ignition.fuel system(if needed), and stopwatch if rigged up.   alot of guys will even dump the starters and just push start or pony start thier bikes.

When jumping a bike from a car, the car engine should definitely NOT be running.

Also (but I have no ieda why), the negative lead should not be connected to the bike battery.  It should be connected to the frame.

The only reason I know this is my last bike had real problems with the battery terminals and sometimes it would start fine, other times it just clicked.

A couple of times this happened outside my local bike shop and the friendly spanner monkeys there used this method (should have asked them why at the time).

Quote from: WozAlso (but I have no ieda why), the negative lead should not be connected to the bike battery.  It should be connected to the frame.

This is to avoid a possible explosion.  Batteries vent flammable hydrogen gas (the kind used in the dirigible Hindenburg!) which can be ignited by a spark.

Sparks are most likely to occur at the point where the final, circuit-closing connection is made.  If you make this connection at some distance from the battery, the risk of explosion is much reduced.  This is also the reason why you should attach the cables to the "donor" battery first.  Of the two batteries, the "donor" battery is more likely to vent hydrogen gas AND to generate a spark.

Well guys just as I thought it was not the battery. Hooked it up to my car and no luck. So its either the starter or something else. When I try to start it it either clicks once, clicks a lot, or I just hear a high pitch grinding screaching  noise. What else could be the problem?

Well I'd toss the bikes battery and then jump it with a car.... a bike battery with a short in it or a serious low charge in it will suck enough juice out of the car bettery to stop it from turning the bike over. Also make sure you dont have hydro lock in the cyl's. Take out the spark plugs and then try cranking it... see if it turns over then.
Cool.
Srinath.

Tried starting off a car battery with the bike battery disconnected, no luck. Also did the spark plug thing too.

I hoped on roll the down the street and pony started her. Rode her for a few mins came back turned her off. Tried starting her back up, still no luck.

Just wondering, how much is a starter brand new or used usually cost?

What you mean by spark plug thing... You cranked it over wihtout the plugs in... and did it turn over or not. If not... when you have the car jumper cables hooked up... well that means your starter is bad... or connections to the battery. Especially that silly little connection to the negative. Hell that connection will be my first guess in any even... Its a little 1 terminal plug that goes to the negative of the battery.
Cool.
Srinath.

I wouldn't know about the price of a used starter, but to get a ballpark figure on a new part, start out at http://www.bikebandit.com.

You didn't mention the year of your bike, so I looked up the parts for a 1997.  Warning -- it's not pretty!

1997 Starting Motor
Starter Clutch[/list:u]After looking at those prices, I'd say that some more troubleshooting is in order.  (You don't want to replace a part unless you know it's the one causing the problem, right?) Here are some things to think about:

* The "click" you hear tells me 1) That you've satisfied all of the "cutout switches" (clutch, sidestand, etc.) and 2) that the low-current side of a relay is working.  The click by itself doesn't guarantee that the high-current side of the relay is supplying power to the motor.

* The "high-pitch screech" doesn't sound good.  It seems to indicate that the starter motor IS getting power and spinning, but that some gearing somewhere isn't meshing well enough to turn over the engine.

* To double-check the motor, you might try to hook the car battery directly to the starter motor terminals (with the bike in NEUTRAL).  This may take some doing - I don't know.  But if you're able to do this and you get the same "screech" and the engine doesn't turn over, I would start to suspect something in the "starter clutch" assembly.[/list:u]I'm already out of my depth at this point, as I've never fiddled with the starter system.  Perhaps someone else can confirm or blast my "theories" and provide actual step-by-step instructions....

Yeah I took the plugs out. At first I thought how would it start without it the plugs? But I did it anyway and realized it was to test if the starter was bad.

Kerry- Do you know any links that has info on the starter clutch assembly?

Ok with the plugs out the engine turns over or not... Also I doubt the starter clutch will completely go, and not transmit rotations at all... I am not certain but I doubt it... having a bike with a bad starter cutch ... I believe it will clunk loudly when start is pressed... well eventually it wil clunk like crazy and not get the bike started??? maybe I am not sure.
Cool.
Srinath.

Quote from: MicroHardKerry- Do you know any links that has info on the starter clutch assembly?

I'm not sure if this is what you had in mind, but maybe these 2 pages from my Haynes manual will help....

Haynes Manual: Starter Clutch and Gear Assembly - Removal and Inspection

Haynes Manual: Starter Clutch and Gear Assembly - Inspection (continued) and Installation

EDIT: Changed links from sisna.com to bbburma.net