This one even has my mechanic scratching his head.

When I hit the starter, the ignition relay clicks away, but she doesn't want to start. After a few attempts, it finally will, but at a terrible price. Whatever is going on is melting the insulation on the wiring to the sidestand safety switch. All I know is that excess voltage is going somewhere it shouldn't be. It started as a rare intermittent problem (more clicking than normal, but no smoke/melting wiring at first), but soon got worse.

This is with a fairly new battery (less than a year old) with no voltage issues we've found, and fully charged. The mechanic checked the grounds and they were fine. He also switched out the ignition relay just in case, but all to no avail. Thankfully, he didn't charge me for the relay since it didn't solve the problem.

Anybody out there have any idea what's going on here and how to fix it?

Thanks.