Starter Only engages 1/3 of the time .

[Boom Boom]

Yes the main problem is the starter not engaging . It turns it over quite good once it engages but it only engages 1/2 the time . button seems to be fine so not sure what is really up. Had a tractor that had issues and it needed to be cleaned . But this doesn't even make an attempt to engage it's frustrating . I'll check all the wires maybe there is something loose or ill fitting . So anyway thanks for all the help and ideas .

,

Add a thicker gasket (or 2) to the case cover.
My 2011 worked poorly, cut some new gaskets from thicker material and works fine now. Just loosen the case bolts a little and see if it works better, if yes extra gasket thickness will fix the problem.

 

[Neil E.]

Add a thicker gasket (or 2) to the case cover. My 2011 worked poorly, cut some new gaskets from thicker material and works fine now. Just loosen the case bolts a little and see if it works better, if yes extra gasket thickness will fix the problem.

How to close to 100% correct function is your starter?

 

[Boom Boom]

How to close to 100% correct function is your starter?

Will not crank a cold engine (sub 30 deg outside), warm engine I am good with just a bump of the switch.
Also I removed all that white sludge they call grease and replaced with a lighter product.
To get an idea of what I needed I backed off the case bolts and used 2 feeler gauges to set the thickness. Just kept going thicker till I was happy with how it worked.
Used a common auto sheet gasket material and made 2 gaskets, all has been well since.

 

[Neil E.]

Do you know what the total gasket thickness was when done?

The stock gasket is .020" free (.015" compressed). Currently I am at .040" free (probably .035" compressed). This created quite large free play between the gear teeth, but didn't improve the starting as much as I expected.

 

[Boom Boom]

From new my starter did not work well if at all.
Someone on here advised me to add a valve shim to the bottom of the starter socket. That did nothing for me but my true problem was the starter was binding on the ring gear. I found this out because the starter stuck tight once and when I pulled everything apart I could see the tension issue.
I do not have a true measure at what my thickness is now but would be at least 3-4 stock gaskets.
Other friends with the same bike we have found a poor ground connection at the starter to be the problem and one just needed a fresh battery to throw enough energy to make it work.
The stock switch assembly I found to be crap and now have the start button being operated from a Yamaha kill switch.
I have no idea if adding that shim tappet done any good because my core problem was a binding issue.

 

[rgranger]

I think that I have 2 or 3 on my 2011, took a long time and one bendix to figure that out.

 

[rosco]

I have monkeyed with these starters quite a bit and have come up with a few ideas that seem to make them work fairly reliable. First make sure your starter is lined up with the case when mounted. By that I mean take the two bolts out of the starter that hold it to the side of the cyl. When the starter is resting in the hole on the flywheel cover you shouldn't have any gap between the starter and the cyl. bracket. If you do you can install a couple of washers to take up the gap. Next make sure that your cover is shimmed correctly. Like explained in previous post's you have to shim it out with gskts. until you have the bendix at the correct distance from the ring gear. If these are both set and the starter still doesn't engage correctly I remove the bendix and stretch the gathering spring that wraps arround the flyweights on the bendix. This spring can be seen when the bendix is in the extended position. You will have to use an o'ring pick with a curved end to pull the spring off of the weights. Be careful not to get to carried away. You just want to stretch the spring enough to relieve the pressure on the flyweights a little. This will allow the flyweights to extend a little easier and stay in the extended position until the bike starts. This has been working great for me. Hope this helps.

 

[SingleTrackMind]

I hate to revive an old thread but I have an issue with my starter not engaging as well. I bought the starter kit from the dealer I bought my bike from the same time I bought the bike. He did the install and it worked about 60% of the time and has gotten to about 20% now. He gave me a set of gaskets for free to set the shim but that did very little to improve my situation. I put the thin gasket on and it seemed to bind, the thick kept it from engaging at all so I just went back to the stock gasket. I also read something on this website about moving a shim. Didn't work for me but I haven't been able to find any pics anywhere.

http://support.ktm-parts.com/entries/350722-Starter-Fix-for-GasGas-XC-300E

I will be pulling my starter again this weekend and make another attempt to fix it by stretching the spring as mentioned in the last post.

If anybody has any pics that would be very helpful. It's frustrating that I would have to buy another bendex for a brand new starter kit that didn't work out of the box. Definitely not fully cooked product with little warranty support.

 

[Neil E.]

Go easy on the spring stretching because the spring puts force on the sprags so they engage to drive the gearing. I suugest you use a pair of calipers to carefully measure the spring OD after you remove it.

Use a bottle with a long neck (wine bottle?) and roll the spring down the neck a bit at a time. Mark each spot that you stop. Remove the spring and measure the OD after each pass until you can tell it's a wee bit larger. Reassemble everything and start the bike a few times. As I understand it you only need to "just" relieve some tension. Repeat as needed.

For the starter to work right you need:
1) a known good battery (or jump from a bigger battery)
2) good quality connections, including ground path
3) free play at the ring gear (no binding)
4) a functional bendix unit

I found the easiest way to verify free play was to cam the bendix out into it's extended position and wrap it with tape (holds it out). Put the ignition cover back on (bendix installed, but no starter motor). Reach in the hole and oscillate the bendix drive gear. You can feel the play since the ring and pinion gears are engaged.

Keep in mind that if your cover needs shimming, you should also put some washers under the starter motor bolts so the motor sits correctly (matches the cover spacing).

 

[rgranger]

I had 3 gaskets on the 2011 before the, err, rebuild. I think that I only have 2 on it now, but I had to really ad some spacing, that is 3 "regular" gaskets, not the thinner ones that come in the kit.

 

[Neil E.]

I remove the bendix and stretch the gathering spring that wraps arround the flyweights on the bendix. This spring can be seen when the bendix is in the extended position. You will have to use an o'ring pick with a curved end to pull the spring off of the weights. Be careful not to get to carried away. You just want to stretch the spring enough to relieve the pressure on the flyweights a little. This will allow the flyweights to extend a little easier and stay in the extended position until the bike starts.

I did some stretching of this spring. It's very difficult to judge when it's correct. I found the spring always relaxed back to about the same dimension as before the stretching. Using a long neck bottle as a mandrel, I rolled the spring along until the ID was about 2.250 inches as measured on the bottle (using four fingers to control the spring and going down a bit at a time).

Even though the relaxed spring only wound up barely larger (maybe .010") than the original it must have stretched enough. On my last ride, the estart worked correctly 100% of the time.

I would say that spring stretching is the final thing to try after all other aspects of the estart system have been checked.

 

[Bobt250]

I engaged the starter with the cover off in my hand. In every try the bendix fully extended and stayed all the way out indicating to me that the flyweights were doing their job. IMO it's an afterthought and a very poor design and after spending $300 to make it work half assed again I'm not happy.

After having all the issues here's my opinion. I went through all the gaskets and spacing issues only to have the teeth strip on my ring gear and bendix. upon removal it's clear to me that only the tips of the teeth are stripped off. It seems to me that in order to get it to work it requires so much clearance that the teeth are barely engaging which stresses the tips of the teeth to the point of failure. I'm really not a very happy camper after being gouged $300 U.S. for a ring gear and bendix. I tried really hard to source a bendix elsewhere since it looks EXACTLY like the parts that sell for 10% of what GG is charging. The problem is I can't find the exact same part, just very similar. Example:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Starter-Moto...db1b69&vxp=mtr

So anyway, my starter still sucks. At first I was happy with hitting the starter button only to hear it "ziiiiinnnnnggg" and having to hit the button multiple times but now that the KTM starter works well I'm not so tolerant.

Rant over

 

[Neil E.]

Bob,
I've spent hours fiddling with the estart system. I've changed the tooth profile and polished the gears. I've spaced the cover out and spaced the starter out. I've added the Ballistic 8 cell battery which has way more cranking power than the Shorai.

It sounds to me like your side cover was spaced too far out, but I'd need to see pictures to say for sure. Even though the bendix cams out when you try it with the cover removed, it still can misfire. What I've come to learn after trying Roscoe's spring stretching, is that it's a balance of forces.

Think of it like a pistol: the slide return spring must be correct for the bullet weight and powder charge. You can "tune" a pistol for better function. The same thing is true with the starter. Just because the bendix cams well doesn't means it will engage fine.

1) You have be sure the basic tooth clearance is correct by shimming the cover (crank location can vary a bit when the engine is assembled).
2) You need a good battery and quality connections.
3) The flyweights must fling out quickly to develop the inertia necessary to force tooth engagement.

I found that no matter how perfect everything else was, the flyweights are the key to good operation. The bendix cam groove doesn't have enough push to guarantee that the gears will mesh. The pinion gear can spin up in rpm before the teeth mesh and then you're screwed. This means the pinion teeth sit against the ring gear and grind until you release the button. Mine would only work 50% of the time. Polishing and profiling improved it 70%. I've only had one ride since I stretched the spring, but the system functioned 100%.

That's right, it never missed once on the approximately 20 starts during the day. So the conclusion is that the flyweight spring controls the initial advance of the gear which is critical for tooth engagement. Ideally the teeth should engage before the starter motor even gets up to speed.

If the flyweight spring was available as a spare part, then experimenting would be less risky. I rolled mine down a long neck bottle to a diameter of 2.250 inches. This seems huge, but it worked for me. It sprung back so close to the original ID, I could barely measure that it changed. The spring is very delicate, so you have to be careful.

The system can be made to work. A good dealer should be able to do this work if you are reluctant to fiddle with it. And yes it should work better as delivered, but no company gets everything right, every time.

 

[nambo-trev]

Hey Neil I just ordered an estart from mark and it came with 3 gaskets for the stator cover are these the spacers your referring 2?

 

[Bobt250]

The spacing I had was with the thickest gasket (in the kit) given to me by my dealer. When I put my new $300 parts on and it didn't work I started working on it. I did some careful measurements and with the standard gasket I should have the right clearance. What I did was spend a lot of time with a dremel tapering off the backside of all the teeth hoping to get more clearance during engagement. This helped but much less than I hoped. I am willing to try the spring stretching idea since I now have two of them. Part of my being pissed off is that I had high hopes that the new parts would work better.

 

[Neil E.]

Trev,
Yes the gaskets are used to space the cover. Remove the bendix, cam it full out and wrap it with tape to hold it open. Install it in the cover and tighten the cap bolts. Check that the cap bolts tighten up well, mine needed narrow M6 washers added. Put the cover in place with one gasket, bolts finger tight only. Reach through the top hole, oscillate the bendix upper gear to see how much backlash there is in the lower teeth. Tighten up the bolts, still good play: you're done. Smear some thick grease on the ring gear teeth and lube the bendix well with light oil.

If it needs more play add a gasket. With the starter motor pushed down tight against the cover (to square it up), look and see if you need to add some washers between the motor and PV cover mounts. You could also use extra PV cover gaskets to line up the top of the starter.

This assumes you've already removed and replaced the crank nut to mount the ring gear. If you have a buffing wheel, polish the ring gear teeth a bit so the outer edges aren't quite so sharp (before installing it). Note: index the ring gear a few times on the flywheel; it may fit better in one position depending on how the tolerances match up.

I suggest turning the engine over by kickstarter and verifying that the ring gear runs true before mounting any other parts.

 

[nambo-trev]

Very good tips Neil I'll have a look when I strip it down this week. Thanks again bro, big help for me avoiding some mistakes I likely would have missed. I'll let you know how it turns out!

 

[canadianstrom]

lube bendix seemed to help

I took my starter off my 2011 EC300, both shims were already on the bottom of the bendix, I tried more shims, same performance ( ie 50% engagement)tried with the cover slightly looser ie to try mimicking increasing gasket thickness, same results. Looking at the wear marks on the teeth, it looks like the engagement is it ok when it does contact.
I then gave a shot of fluid film spray lube into the bendix to try and lube the cams that are to lock and the starter performed much better, probably over 90% of the time.

 

[rosco]

Bob, I know it sucks to have to modify a new part but I think you will be amazed at how much difference it will make on your starter engagement. I have stretched the flyweight spring on probably half of the new bikes I have sold. The only purpose of the spring is to hold the flyweights tight while in the resting position. As long as the spring has enough tension to do that, that is all you need. This helps the weights stay in the extended position which keeps the bendix engaged to the ring gear. I have done enough of them now to where I don't even worry about over stretching them. As long as the spring isn't loose on the weights when you are done it is tight enough. But you do want to make sure that your distance between your pinion gear and ring gear are correct before you do any other modifications.
Also when checking the distance between your pinion and ring gear make sure you grab ahold of the flywheel and pull it out first. Most bikes will have a little end play on the crank so you want to have the crank slid all the way to the left before measuring.
This starter system is used on many different vehicles and seems to be a pretty good system overall. I think the reason the GasGas's are so tempermental is because the bendix engages straight on to the ring gear instead of at a 90 degree angle like most other units.

 

[Bobt250]

I'll give it a try. Thanks