How To Disable the Sidestand Switch On Your DR200
If you're the kind of DR200 rider who prefers dirt to pavement, consider disabling your sidestand cut-off switch.
Why would you want to disable this safety feature? Imagine that you’re riding on some pretty gnarly terrain and something — a tree branch, some sagebrush, a rock — catches your sidestand and pulls it down, instantly killing your engine. This is a Very Bad Thing that could lead to a crash.
But first: if you decide to disable your sidestand cut-off switch, you must remember to put your sidestand up before riding away! This guide is merely for illustrative purposes. If you do this mod and then forget to put your sidestand up and crash because of it, don’t come back here and blame me.
Anyway, here’s how I did it on my DR200.
First, locate the sidestand switch. It’s on the left side of the bike (from the rider’s perspective) near where the sidestand is attached to the frame. It is #16 in the diagram below.
Unscrew the two bolts holding the switch to the frame and remove the switch, then follow the wire back up the frame toward the seat. Remove the plastic side trim panels and then remove the seat. Keep tracing the switch wire back and you’ll find it ends up at an electrical connector near the big bundle of wires under the seat. (See the green connector in the photo below.)
Now you have to bypass the switch. Simply unplugging the switch from the connector will not work — you must connect the green and black wires together somehow. Since I have no plans to sell my DR200 and don’t care about impacting the resale value or being able to return it to stock, I decided to cut the connector out entirely.
Then, I soldered the remaining wires together, like so:
Here’s a zoomed out view that gives a better sense of the location of the wires:
I covered the solder joint with heatshrink tubing and then put the seat and trim panels back on the bike.
That’s all there is to it. Remember, if you do this mod, you must remember to put your sidestand up before riding away!