[twisty]

imported post

mikula wrote:

My '81 wing had been sitting in the garage since March and this weekend I tried to start her up. She was definitely having hard time, coughed up a few and smoke came out of the exhaust couple of times. So I kept cranking her (stupid, stupid) until starter motor gave up -- I tried too hard. Starter motor at this point was very hot to the touch.

I recharged the battery over night and this morning starter motor won't crank the engine. Actually, it won't spin at all. Basically, I hear starter solenoid click when i press start button and then there's loud grinding noise coming out of the starter motor and i can feel starter casing shaking a bit. I removed the starter motor off the bike, and connected it on bench to a 12v battery and it spins just fine. I also connected it through the solenid (without putting it back into the engine) and it spins ok which means my start switch/solenoid/battery connection is ok. Then i put it back into the engine and same story: grinding noise coming out of the starter motor.

So I am puzzled... is it still possible that starter motor is not ok although it spins just fine when not installed in the engine? Brushes maybe? Or am I looking into something more serious, e.g. starter clutch is broken?

mikula, it's possible you had a high resistance starter ground with the starterin the bike & it improved when you disturbed the mounting by removing it.

Those 1100 starters also had problems with the brush plate not grounding correctly (inside the starter).. It pays to add a regular grounding wire from the brush plate to the starter housing (inside the starter) as the original rivets are prone to having high resistance & causing either a slow starter or no starter..

Twisty