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Hello again world,I am becoming slightly paranoid that my starter clutch/bearing will one day fragment into the bowels of my crakcase after hearing many horror stories of this happening to other owners.Is this really the case,can I stop it happening,are there any warning signs or weird noises before impending doom happens,Every thing works ok at the moment,bike has only covered 13.000 miles since '79,as its not not broke do I need to fix it,ciao for now,MIKE.

Hey Mike, The best thing you can do is to make sure your carbs are in tune - sync'd - and also your intake manifold insulators and exhaust gaskets are in good nick as well.

Backfires during startup are what kills the starter bearing [sprag]. Beyond that, once you start hearing a coffee grinder sound, you know you are in for a repair soon. It is best to fix it [replace] sooner than later, as later usually means replacing the starter gear as well.

BevHevSteve wrote:
Backfires during startup are what kills the starter bearing [sprag]. Beyond that, once you start hearing a coffee grinder sound, you know you are in for a repair soon. It is best to fix it [replace] sooner than later, as later usually means replacing the starter gear as well.

hello

new here, was on bevelheads list before..with a '81 900 SD

I can hear this coffee grinder sound on my Darmah...seems time for sprag to go.
there are two replacements avail; one from V2, the other from Howdi, both in Australia.
Any experience on these ? Is there any reason to prefer one than the other ?

at last, since engine rebuild, i have very hard time with the starter; in addition to the noise, it turns not fast enough to start the engine, although fresh battery. Having completely disassembled the unit, nothing seems out of work in there..Can be a weared out sprag a cause for starter slow running ?
In the starter, i have painted the magnets (bolted into the core), may be this is not something to do ? Is that normal that the rotor can come into contact with the magnets from time to time ?

that's a lot of questions, however i haven't found any exhaustive answer on the net so far..

Emmanuel

If the Howdi Ducati unit is similar to the Laverda one he makes its a work of ART,he turned up at a local Laverda club meeting to show it to us,
its an amassing bit of gear,looks like it would last longer than the rest of the bike,only problem was it was very expencive,no doubt lots of machine time to make.