It never rains...

... but it don't half pour.

Just recently the Quota's been a bit slow starting - sometimes it
would churn without firing. A quick flick off/on of the ignition and
it'd fire.

Well, yesterday it refused to start at all, but started fine that
evening. I figured that it was an intermittent relay, which is an easy
fix, so wasn't too bothered.

This morning again it wouldn't start, but dicking with the relays got
it going. So far, so good.

This evening, I pressed the starter, and, to my surprise, the engine
turned once before the starter relay started chattering - a sure sign
of a flat battery. WTF?

With much messing about, including scraping the relay contacts clean
to get the ignition working, and a jump start, I got home.

So it seems that I have a dodgy relay and, totally unrelated, the
battery's not charging properly. The battery is now on the Accumaate
but it's not really showig the sort of voltage I'd expect, so it
*looks* as though it's the battery at fault, but we'll see.

In a sense that could be good news because the Quota uses a Ducati
alternator with a matching reg/rec and yes they're expensive and no,
there are no cheap aftermarket repalcements, unlike Bosch ones.

The only really good news was that a week or two ago I replaced one of
the coils and this seems to have cured an intermittent wet-weather
misfire; the journey home was actually quite pleasant.