Almost everyone owning a 1999-2000 manufactured Falco or Mille has experienced a failure of the sidestand switch. For most, the result is a dash light that bears no connection to whether or not the sidestand is actually down. For some unlucky others, the engine cutout function has come in and prevented their bikes from starting.
The root cause of the problem is a plastic locating pin on the switch rotor. When tight, the switch rotor tends to spin from the friction of the sidestand, but it can slip and the plastic pin is supposed to prevent the rotor from getting misaligned. Instead, the weak pin just shears, leaving a stub in the sidestand hole.
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The plastic pin in the switch rotor is easily sheared by the sidestand. |
There are several solutions. When mine broke in the break-in period, I just loosened the switch, realigned the broken pin to the hole and tightened it down well. It held like this until about 10,000 miles when it slipped again.
The best solution is probably to complain to your dealer. Aprilia redesigned the switch to use a metal rotor in 2001. Dealers have been slow in getting a stock of these switches, but they may have them by now. As a safety item that probably broke during warranty, I'd expect the switch to be free.
Another solution is to remove the switch and jumper the wiring harness. I believe Aprilia even sells these jumpers for racing use, but you could easily cut your switch cabling and make up your own. This would disable the light on the dash permanently.
The solution shown here is simple. Drill out the old plastic pin and replace it with something more sturdy. Some have used bicycle spokes. I managed to fit a small machine screw in there, but the hole was large so I broke through the sidewall of the rotor with the tap and needed a bit of epoxy to finish the job. There's a guy on the Mille list who fitted a titanium pin (some people are serious about their weight savings!).
| There's just enough width in the rotor to drill and tap a small machine screw. A bicycle spoke is probably a better solution if you have one on hand. |  |
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