'79 GS850 are the kill switches rebuildable?

[onchiman]

Yesterday afternoon the bike quit on the way home. All lights worked but no starter or spark. Fuses were all okay then I decided to track it down. Went into the headlight bucket and pulled off the kill/starter connector and jumped the kill switch. Bike started right up. So I went home and pulled apart the handlebar switch and found that the kill switch is basically shot. It's a simple design, just a small phenolic resin board with two contacts riveted into a metal holder that screws into the top half of the throttle assembly. The board is cracked in two places. No mention of this being a replaceable item on Bike Bandit though. I'd rather not buy the whole assembly if I can just replace the switch guts. Anyone have success with mods for this?

[Steve]

For all the work that would be necessary to get that little sucker out of there and a new one installed, I think I would rather just spend a couple of bucks on a replacement assembly.

I just did a quick eBay search for "Suzuki right switch" and found 25 auctions that matched. Only a couple of them looked promising, but if you scroll down to the items available in eBay stores, there are another 129 items. :shock: Many of them are close enough that they should work. Keep in mind that other years will probably work, as well as other models. I saw several for 550s and 650s that will probably fit right in. At the worst, you might have to adapt the connector where it plugs in to the main harness.

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[hampshirehog]

I've rebuilt dozens of handlebar switches using secondhand bits. However, I've got loads of junk switches to rob bits from. Unusually for Suzuki the internals are not that interchangeable between models / years (I guess 'cos the switches were bought in) so unless you've got access to a big box of pick'n'mix you're gonna be better off buying a working switch off Ebay.

[robertob]

Yeah, I have the same experience. Honda switches all use the same parts, though!