Starting Your Motorcycle Without a Key
Hi folks, today I have a small post that I hope will be useful at least to some of you. The motorcycling season is almost over in my country, that’s why every minute that can be spent on the road is priceless. You can imagine the shock I experienced when I opened my garage, sat down on my bike and realized that I forgot the key at home. Wasting time getting home to take the key was not an option, so I simply hotwired my iron horse and rode back home to get the key. That’s when I thought “well, though it’s no rocket science, but someone might not be familiar with this method. Why not writing a post on this?”. So here I am writing this post and hoping it will become useful at least to someone.
One guy I had a skype chat about this topic with told me: “Hotwiring? What for? I’ll call a car key replacement service and get a new key. I told he’s a lazy car owner who uses his motorcycle only to show off once or twice a month and has no idea how painful it might be to have to wait for several days for new keys to be delivered. If you are like me and think that staying without your legs for so long is not an option, this article might be right for you.
As I said, starting your motorcycle without a key, is not something complex. You can do the hotwiring in 5 steps.
- Locate your wiring system and look for 3 wires intertwined together in a sleeve. Those should be of different colors.
- Follow the wires to the place where they end. There you will see a wiring cap (normally made of plastic), that connects to other wires.
- Pull the cap, find your ignition wires, hold on to the lower wires. If you can, try to recognize the wires to know which one you need.
- Put one end of a wire into an eye of a socket, put another wire into another eye of a socket. By this time, you should hear the engine starting and a sort of a click. If you don’t hear it, try plugging changing the wires in the eyes of a socket. If it doesn’t work, try another combination of wires. It’s totally safe.
- Start the engine just like you do it usually, be it with an electric starter or a kick-starter.
I did this plenty of times, and I helped my friends handle the wiring on their bikes, and it works every time. You can use this trick in many situations, it doesn’t break your bike, although you definitely should find your key later or get a new one.
I believe hotwiring is something all motorbike owners should learn to avoid unpleasant situations or accidents. The same works for cars too, no one knows when and how you might lose your keys, and sometimes waiting for a new one takes too long.
Take care and never lose your keys 🙂
Alex
