She is playing up again

I decided it was time to get my left hand pannier fixed the other day, some daylight had started showing between the welds and around one of the mounting points. This is the pannier that I have repeatedly punished ;- hitting a BMW GS1200 (twice in one day), sliding down a road in Argentina, sliding down a road in France, sliding down the side of a caravan on the M6 .... and many more minor slow speed drops.

I popped down to Vern's (http://www.projectvnd.com) near Chester, Vern had made the panniers for me back in 2010, and had the repairs done. Once I had bolted everything back onto the bike again and accepted the compliments from Vern about the fact the Italian bike was still going, it did what it always does, refused to start.

It was the classic dead ignition. Nada. Change the fuse, nothing.
Jiggle the wires at the ignition, life.... dead.

Suspecting the previous soldering repair back in Kazakhstan had failed I stripped off the front end, and split the ignition barrel only to see that the solder was still intact. This meant my Dutch motorway repair of sliding a piece of plastic into the barrel to put pressure on the connectors had failed. It was time for a new solution.

Carefully find a position at that the lower half of the barrel would enable the ignition to function when the key was turned in the upper half (allowing the key->dash->ECU security to engage) I got it running. Then strapped the lower half of the ignition barrel to the throttle cable and hit the road.

Arriving home, chuffed with my latest bodge job I switched the ignition off. Well I tried to, the key would not turn.Only one thing for it, get a screwdriver, push it into the lower barrel and twist.

So, the bike is back in the garage with the keys in the ignition, until I find time to work on her.