wimpy starter

[PlanetMobius]

Greetings forum people,

this is my first post since finding this site. I discovered you guys while looking for tech tips for my 1980 Special. I've wanted one of these bikes sin the late 70's when growing up in El Paso and seeing the police riding them. This bike was a legend in those days.

I picked up my first one about two weeks ago for $700 and after another hundred got in on the road and looking pretty good.

It runs like a swiss watch except for the starter. With a fully charged battery or even hooked to my truck it slowly chuggs along until it finally starts the bike. It's 70 degrees outside now. I can only imagine that on colder fall days, this thing is going to tell me to call a cab.

All electrical is working strong and bright. Any way to make this starter more of a team player? Any diagnosis?

[natemoen]

I am just north of you in Pewaukee!

Could be dirty/poor connections to the starter, check for voltage drop to the starter connection.

Could also be the batter is not good, might be able to hold a charge and run the bike but when you hit the starter it is too high of a load and it cant quite handle it.

[PlanetMobius]

Hey Pewaukee,

I checked the connections and all voltage good. Battery is a brand new Odyssey and fully charged. A friend suggested that I remove and clean the starter. I'm not sure what that entails.

[CatatonicBug]

Did you check the GROUND connections? All of them? Make sure they are corrosion-free, and dab them with some anti-sieze to prevent corrosion and encourage electron flow.

[cywelchjr]

Make sure you actually HAVE the ground connection between the engine and the frame. I had the problem you describe and found I didn't have that. Things will pretty much work cause the engine will mostly ground through the exhaust system but it's not that good of a ground. The ground is a pretty thick wire that goes from the middle drive to the frame, a big black wire. If it's not there you will get just what you describe. If it's missing, you might need to run two or three of the thickest wire you can find in it's place to provide that ground, it goes to the ground screw on the frame right behind and above the middle drive, there will probably be the end of a wire hanging there if it's not connected.

[BigRed]

There are more ground connections on the body of the voltage regulator, so you may want to pull those off and clean them. They probably don't affect your starter as much as the big ground strap mentioned above, but I had problems there, and it's easy and free to fix.

[ManagerMike]

Certainly check grounds and connections, the starter relay itself was the culprit of similar concerns on mine when I first got it. Jump the large terminals on the relay, sparks will fly but if the starter sings like a bird, you've found your trouble.
Any starter solenoid that fits will function as a relacement, the one now on mine fits a Ford as well.

[cywelchjr]

There are more ground connections on the body of the voltage regulator, so you may want to pull those off and clean them. They probably don't affect your starter as much as the big ground strap mentioned above, but I had problems there, and it's easy and free to fix.

They won't affect it at all as the charging system grounds do not supply any ground to the engine at all. The charging system is isolated from the engine barring a fault, in which case it must be replaced. The only ground (other than the incidental ground through the exhaust and/or the driveshaft and FD) is that ground wire/strap between the middle drive and the frame. There is no other ground supplied to the engine from the factory. The ignition again is a closed system, providing it's own isolated hot and ground for the spark plugs, independent of any others and doesn't supply any ground usable for any other purpose. However, managermike has a good point about the solenoid, as that too can cause the symptom, it being the other side of the starter circuit that can cause the bottleneck that can slow it down (other than a bad battery of course). So we have two simple things to check for, one a quick visual check, and two function checks and possible cleanings (jumping across the solenoid as one test and running a ground jumper from the engine to the frame as a second test). If either test makes it spin things fast, that test has bypassed the bad section and tells you what you need to fix.