Friend's bike woes

[JackoliciousLegs]

Hello... first post in the bikes section. My friend has a '00 Suzuki 650 something. Looks like this:


It's a very pretty bike. Anyways... the batter was dead, so we tried to jump it from a car battery. Both 12V 6amp, right? Lights turned on... ready to start. And, I guess one of the leads touched the frame and something started smoking. We immediately removed the cables and inspected. The clutch cable was the thing that smoked. It roasted the plastic off from around cable. We think that that's the only thing that fried. Anyways... How hard is it to replace that baddy? I assume, pretty easy. Just take off the cable, just like a bike, take it to a shop, get a new one. Should we check anything else before starting her up again besides making sure, no metal is touching metal?

[JackoliciousLegs]

So, it fried where i drew in red. From about the set of nuts right about the clutch lever thing down on the right side to where it can first be near the engine. The rest of the cable, in green, seems to be in tact. The cable sticks now though.

[Ginger]

Super easy to replace. Did one last week and it took like, 10 minutes. You should have no problem with it.

[Ginger]

Oh, and if you jump a bike from a car make sure the car's off.

[JackoliciousLegs]

Why is that? Probably something really simple.

[Ginger]

Honestly, it's something I've read a bunch of places but never really qualified with facts. If I had to guess I would say it's that the car's alternator pumps out a lot more current that the bike's system isn't capable of handling. I could be way off, too, but it 'makes sense'

[.paul]

you are correct andrew, the car battery being off is more than enough to jump a bike