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Starter Question

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mikeyboi83:
So I believe my starter is bad, I can hear it click and spin...you can hear it try and catch and sometimes it will catch and fire up. Now I took out the solenoid assembly and all the teeth look good. When I look down in the housing that holds the lock cam and fork claw and its pretty grimmy so I will clean that up but it sounds like the starter is spinning but not engaging every time? I am assuming it is the starter clutch.

So my question is.....a family friend of mine things its the same thing (hes been working on bikes for 40 years) that the starter sounds like it is staying engaged....said to get a new starter and get a rebuild/repair kit.

So should I try the rebuild/repair kit first?

Thoughts/ideas?

Lefty:
I had a similar problem recently, the bike had sat all winter & when I tried to start it, I heard the starter spinning & thought the worst. I checked my voltage & it was at 10.4 volts. I charged the battery up & it worked ever since. These bikes require a 14 amp hour battery, if I remember correctly & that's a lot of juice to start these big old engines. Try that before you do anything, Lefty

mikeyboi83:
Yep battery is fully charged and is also brand new.....so to start my detective work I removed the solenoid assembly so I could watch the idle gear and such to see if it was grabbing the drive shaft which it was...so I put in the drive pinion and held it in place and the drive shaft was pushing it out.

So I hooked up a batt charger with low voltage so I can turn over the bike so I could hear starter and it would just spin, well after putting back the solenoid assembly I tried it again and this time when I turned on the charger it started spinning the starter WITHOUT the key turn on! which led me to believe the starter solenoid is dying. It kept doing it a few times and it finally stopped.

Now I have to turn on the key like normal and hit the start button for it to turn, BUT this time all I heard was clicking and humming coming from the solenoid, it would not even engage the starter unless I bypassed the solenoid, but even that I could only do for a split second because it was litterly soldering the old screw driver I used to the nut on the solenoid. So I removed the solenoid relay and it is def the original. So before I take apart the starter and check/clean everything in there I will get a new solenoid.

Anyone have any input?

HOWEVER, when I bypassed the solenoid it would engage the starter and I would hear it spin and CLANK once or twice and spin. Sometimes it would CLANK and fire then spin.

Sound familiar to anyone?

WTF304:
I doubt the starter is staying engaged. .... that hit and miss is usually cause there isn't enough juice in the battery or the flywheel ring gear or pinion teeth are worn so badly that it only catches just in it's sweet spot ....... which is also caused by cranking the piss out of it and killing the battery. Dirty or worn components might cause it to stick or the spring infront of the pinion on the worm gear is weak or possibly missing. Get a proper battery, clean all the components real good and grease them ..... a starter either works or it doesn't simple as that so I'd skip the rebuild kit.

Not only does the starter need juice, the starter solenoid .... the ignition switch. .... the plunger to engage the pinion .... the starter relay .... starter button .... headlight and tail light  cause they were designed to always be on .... the pulsar/pick up sensor. That stuff has a high demand for electricity. ..... couldn't hurt to locate and clean up or repair any ground wire connections

mikeyboi83:
So I took apart the solenoid assembly and omg was it nasty!...took me little over half an hour to just get the solenoid loose. Someone must have removed it before me because it had a stripped phillips head screw. So I took it all apart, cleaned, oiled it all up and reassembled, before I took out the pinion I noted that when I would rotate the drive shaft to pull in the pinion I noticed that the fork claw was not going down enough so that when the lock cam came down it was not hooking onto the fork claw. So I cleaned everything nicely and  after putting back together everything moved A LOT better BUT the fork claw was still not going down far enough. After I thought about it for a few I realized that whoever did this before me but the washer in upside down so it was flat! So I turned it over and it now works the way it should.

I also found out that the starter solenoid relay was bad, it started turning the starter without a key in the bike! I got a new one on the way so when it arrives I will give her a shot and report back to you guys!

Thanks

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