Jbeta300 wrote:Pull the wiring harness apart at at the steer tube right where it flexes. All the ground wires are spliced together in that area, which includes the ground wire for the starter relay. That's what it was on mine, intermittently had no starter.
I was also having intermittent starter issues with my 2016 Beta 300RR Race. By my 4th ride on the new bike, I was having problems. I checked all connectors, greased them, and zip tied them back together but was still having issues. After reading your post, I decided to see if I could isolate it to a break in the harness next to the steering neck. When I removed the instrument cluster bracket and flexed the harness, the starter failed. After messing around with it for a bit, it went from intermittent to complete failure (apparently I finally broke the wire in the harness). I didn't really like the idea of having to strip back the factory harness, much less test each wire until I found the break so I started following the schematic for the starter relay. Here's what I found, and my fix.
There are 3 wires @ the starter relay connector. The Grey/Black & White/Orange wires are the starter switch circuit (12V), the black wire is the ground for the relay. Testing continuity from ground to the black lead, I got an open reading. For troubleshooting purposes, I took a jumper and ran it from ground to the black lead @ the relay and hit the start button. BINGO!!!! The bike fired up.
Why Beta decided to run the ground for the relay all the way through the harness and up to the front of the bike is beyond me. Again, I didn't want to splice into the harness, so I created an easier fix. I simply ran a ground wire from the negative side of the battery, directly to the black lead wire @ the relay connector. I found that a small ring connector would slide securely into the back of the relay connector over the top of the black wire that is already in place. This way I could keep everything stock without having to hack and solder. We'll see how well it holds, but from what I can tell it's not going anywhere!
Hopefully this helps others out that experiencing the same issue. Maybe Beta will get this addresed in the future. This was the first bike I ever bought new and was a bit pissed that I was already chasing electrical faults after only 28hr runtime!