1985 Big Red 250es kick start locked up

[Sperdue]

Here is the picture of the broken gear. Would this had locked up the kick start. I found another post that said this gear was broke and his motor was still good. Should I replace these bad parts and try to fire it up?

[ps2fixer]

That's the gear I was thinking of but wasn't sure. That's for the electric start. There's a one way bearing on the fly wheel that should make that gear not effect anything. If you pull the whole side cover off, you can try to spin the actual motor over. The kick starter gear and clutches are under the other side's cover.

The teeth of that gear had to have ended up somewhere, I'd defo say change your oil as soon as you figure out what's up and hopefully that pushes the broken teeth out. If/when you pull the side cover off, I'd say to run a magnet through the engine on the bottom to collect anything there, there's some holes and such to get into the transmission section with out splitting cases. One of those magnets on a stick would work well.

You can test the one way bearing how the engine is in those pics, the gear still in the engine, try to spin that both directions, one directly it should spin freely and the other direction it should lock up (tries to turn engine over). Not sure if you could get enough torque on the gear to turn the engine over normally or not to tell if the crank is seized up for some reason.

Also when you reinstall the starter gears cover, be sure to use a gasket, if I remember right it's too tight tolerance to not use a gasket (a lot of the Honda covers are like this).

[Sperdue]

After taking the left side cover off I found the pieces of the teeth that broke off. It looks like the engine turns over now. I can put it all together and the kick start is free now. It turns the flywheel when pushed down. I seen a video showing the one way clutch bearing that went bad and caused the starter gears to break so I guess that’s what happened to me. So am I safe to replace one way bearing and wore out gears, put new gaskets on and try to fire it up. I will definitely change the oil if it cranks and circulates.

[ps2fixer]

Yea sounds like the one way bearing must have seized up on the shaft somehow or it's installed backwards. Does the gear around the fly wheel spin freely in one direction?

If you leave the starter gears all out (the other gear I'd remove too) you could put it back together and use kick start only till you get the parts in. It wouldn't hurt to buy a matching set of gears for the starter and replace them as a set as they can interchange with other models but sometimes the teeth count is different, but the physical spacing is the same.

In my mind I wouldn't think the teeth that broke off would have happened based on the one way bearing failing, I would expect the gear that goes directly to the fly wheel to get the bulk of the damage as it has the highest torque to overcome spinning the starter. It's geared down so the starter can turn the motor, so revering the logic and having the engine spin the starter, it's very very high geared.

Glad you found the fly wheel spins freely now, atleast the core engine isn't locked up, so much cheaper to repair and should be simpler to deal with =).

[Sperdue]

She's alive! Thanks p2fixer! I put everything back together, leaving the starter gears out, and she runs just fine. I will have to get some money up to buy me some new parts now. I plan on replacing the starter gears and starter, one way bearing and gaskets. My gear shifter spindle is stripped so I may look into replacing that too while i have it broke down. Thanks again for all of you help p2fixer.

[ps2fixer]

No problem, glad you got the issue isolated so you can atleast ride the machine if you want =).