Kickstart Shaft Washer

[SFerinTEXAS]

Have a XJ motor upside down with the countershaft out. No kickstart parts in there.

[3Phase]

Cool. There is a member here on channel 11 that swore that his late-model engine came with the entire internal kicker/idler assembly complete with the ratchet and spring. All he had to do to add a permanent kicker was install the outer kick shaft, gears and return spring under the clutch cover and he insisted that every other bike made that year was made the same way, too.

I haven't looked inside my XJ's broken engine yet but it wouldn't surprise me to discover that it doesn't have an idler gear because by the time the XJ was produced Yamaha had already substituted/deleted some parts that made the engine and transmission more durable but slightly more difficult or expensive to manufacture. The substitution of a single-row ball bearing and spacer for the original double-row ball bearing for the transmission output shaft and the deletion of the rolled steel index pin pressed into the outer race of the clutch/transmission input shaft bearing spring to mind.

So, is it more likely that the idler gear is used to kickstart the engine and pulls double duty by stabilizing the 1st gear wheel so it is less prone to wobble, wallowing out its pressed-in bronze inner bearing sleeve during up/downshifts and causing the dogs and slots to wear out

or

is it more likely that the idler served no purpose at all except to kickstart the engine so it was eventually removed from production after the emergency kicker was deleted, however a few rebel 1980s proto-steampunk Japanese assembly line workers really liked the way the original transmission design looked and sounded with the idler gear when they spun the transmission and made motorcycle noises during assembly so some late-model engines had the idler gear but some did not and the rash of unexplained 1st gear shifting problems that seem to plague mainly the XJ and some other late-model engines but not others is entirely coincidental?


It would be useful to find out which engines did or did not have the kicker idler gear installed when they developed the shift/acceleration failure caused by worn 1st gear slots. There is almost no hard data available one way or the other at this time so it is little more than my supposition that the kicker idler gear is used to kickstart the engine and also stabilizes the 1st gear wheel.

[SFerinTEXAS]

This post shows the same thing I see in mine.
http://www.xs11.com/forum/showthread.php?t=154

Assume the area to the bottom left is where the kick stuff goes.Right?

I have an SG engine in storage with the pan off and upside down. Should be by there soon and will look in it too.

[SFerinTEXAS]

BTW I also have an obvious !st gear problem on my XJ, planning fix in progress. and the gears I took out of the junk spare XJ engine show signs of 1st problems as well . May well be as you suggest, that may explain alot.

[DGXSER]

On all the 81 models I have seen, inside the clutch cover is this...



And none had first gear issues, only second. But I did backcut all four.