Wanderlust -

see 2nd "reply" in this Tech Doc -

http://suzukisavage.com/cgi-bin/YaBB.pl?num=1169356966

Everyone would like to toss that thing, and, it Can be done, but, it takes some doing.

The decompression solenoid opens the exhaust valve for a brief period when you first engage the starter.....it allows the engine to get some rotational momentum before the piston comes up on a compression stroke.

In warm weather with a good battery that is fully charged.....most often the compression release is not necessary, and the bike will start just fine.  However Suzuki designed the bike to run in all sorts of climates, and in very cold weather the oil is thick and the battery is down on performance, and the starter may not be able to get the engine to turn over if the piston comes up on the compression stroke before any momentum is built up in the rotating mass.  The compression release makes the bike far more reliable to start in poor conditions.

I eliminated my automatic compression release and it took me a while to design and build a manual system that worked well, and I rode for an entire summer without a compression release....and 99 out of 100 times the bike started just fine.  Every now and then the piston was on the compression stroke when I hit the starter button......and the starter could not push the piston up over TDC and I had to stop, put the bike in gear and roll it forward to get it off the compression stroke, then the bike started fine.  Now that I have a manual release I only use it when the piston does hit the compression stroke...most the time I don't need to use it.

The stock system works just fine....the only reason I got rid of it was that I used a different tank on my bike, and there was no room under the tank for the solenoid.