YTM 200K Starter Rebuild

[El Camexican]

I don’t see a thread on this, so thought I’d put it up after enduring my most recent recoil starter assembly. This is the starter that comes on the non-electric start models and has an auto-decompression feature.

Picked this particular unit up in 2009 for $15 bucks and it came disassembled in a greasy bag. The only reason I bought it was because I saw the prices were getting up there on them and Yamaha had stopped selling some of the pieces. There are almost 20 parts in this thing if you count the decompression cable and pull rope and small parts like the springs can corrode and fail over time. I got bored last weekend and decided to start cleaning and assembling some items I had laying around, so this got picked as project of the week.

First all the grease was removed, then a dish soap wash followed by a bath in muriatic acid to remove the rust and old zinc followed by a baking soda rinse to neutralize the acid.



Took them to the platers along with some other old parts and got them back on Friday evening.



That was when I realized I had no clue as to how this thing goes together, so I removed and opened up the starter on my trike to peek inside. Seems I was missing a bushing, but it happens to be half the length of a Yamaha Tri-Z case bushing and only half as long. The I.D. and O.D. are less than .010” different, so I ground an old one to length and used that.

The hard part is winding the spring up to fit in the housing. The last one I did almost resulted in a divorce. I don’t know how I ever managed to get it in, but I guess my hands were stronger, because this time all I was able to do was bleed and make my hands numb. After a few hours of failed attempts I went on youtube and found this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4r8wbejHXY

I followed everything but the duct tape part, didn’t need it, but I can’t over emphasize the need for eye protection. I don’t mean safety glasses, I mean a full face motorcycle helmet and it would have been much easier with a second set of hands to work the cable ties.



Make sure everything gets a coat of grease. These starters can fill up with water pretty easily.

The pull rope is pretty simple, just wrap the end with electrical tape to facilitate pushing it through the holes and make sure to preload the recoil spring.

Here’s one specifically for the YTM 200K https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBhtlWumtlI