Hello Honda owners! One of my riding companions has a 2003 Rancher ES and on our last trip, his battery wire vibrated loose and the battery went dead. Isn't there anyway to start this machine other than the electric starter? Can you pull it to start it? Did they hide a pull start cord somewhere we could not find? We ended up putting his battery in my ATV, charging it up and then putting it back in his machine. Surely Honda didn't build a machine without any way to start it if the battery goes dead?

 

alot do, luckly though honda did include a pull start it is on the right side (if your sitting on it) behind a cover against the back of the floorboards, the cover needs to be removed to get at the pull start

 

Yep, rope pull or jump start. That es cant be bump started.

 

Thanks Little Bill, will check that out in the morning, if I can't find it, might be asking for more help. Told my riding buddy I could find out here, you may have just won me a pop! (Can't drink beer anymore[img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-sad.gif[/img])

 

On the ES, without electrical don't you need the foot shifter to get the transmission back into neutral (won't start without being in neutral?), even to use the pull starter??? And tell me just why you couldn't bump start it like any other autoclutch bike? You would have to hold the bike in neutral with the foot shifter, then just let it go back into gear when you had enough ground speed.

It's hard to have any sympathy for your friend getting stuck out on the trail, when he hadn't even checked out the feautes of his own machine!

 

you can use the emergency shift-lever that's included in the tool kit to get it into neutral. But I believe the ECM will not allow the ICM to issue spark to the engine without seeing neutral gear. It's kinda one of those ES quirks that wont let you bump-start, unless you know a lot of electrical (like me) and you can use a few simple well-placed tools to short certain things to bump start.

 

Thanks guys for the info, except for good 'ol Reconranger, typical Californian response!

 

Well, first I must apologize to all you Californians, except reconranger, after I "cooled off" a little, I realized I was very wrong in taking reconranger's comments as being typical of Californians. Some of my best friends are from California, some still live there. All I do know is that here in Idaho when we find someone, friend or stranger, broke down out on the trail, we stop and help in any way we can, or at least the group I ride with will do that. Never has any one of us told someone that they shouldn't be out here because they "didn't know the features of their machine"! Again, I apologize to the rest of you California ATVers and certainly hope you don't share reconranger's attitude.

 

Hey, I towed a POLARIS home just the other day. That guy was a complete stranger! I help anyone and everyone that I meet out on the trail with a problem (not just attractive women!).

All your buddy needed to do was just read his owners manual (preferably BEFORE he went out riding). I just wonder if his owner manual was with him in the trunk of the bike the whole time (there is a flap that holds it in the top of the trunk), and he could have easily looked up the location of that backup starter???

My point was that one should not venture out into the wilderness so unprepared thay you couldn't deal with something as basic as a dead battery (lots of us live happily with bikes that have no battery at all). And, the problems that the ES system added to your situation, is just another reason why I always warn prospective buyers to just keep it simple and get the foot shift model.

 

Well, I apologized to all the other ATVers in California and now I apologize to Reconranger. Guess I just took what you wrote in the wrong context. Easily found the pull start rope on my companion's Rancher with the instructions from LittleBill. My friend had told me he had looked the whole machine over and just could not find any pull start rope and that he had left the operator's manual at home. It was late and getting darker by the second, so I took a quick look for it myself and, when it wasn't obvious, took him at his word and progressed to plan "B". You are right Reconranger, he should have been more familiar with his new ATV, but he is no newcomer to ATVing, having owned a mid 80s Honda 350 since it was new and having logged an estimated 8,000 mile on it, before buying the Rancher. He either overlooked the part about the pull start rope or just never read his operator's manual. We have logged a lot of miles in the "backcountry" of Idaho and go very much prepared, and I couldn't believe Honda would build an ATV without a pull start rope. By the way, I think Honda probably makes the most dependable ATV on the market today. I bet him a "Pepsi" that there was a pull start rope and that I could find out where it was here. So, three things are going to happen, he is going to feel real "stupid" when I show him his start rope, I am going to try to "inspire" him to READ HIS OPERATOR'S MANUAL and I'm sure going to enjoy that pepsi!! [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-wink.gif[/img] Thanks again for everyone's help and "keep the rubber side down"![img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-happy.gif[/img]