Hello everyone!
First a little backstory... my little thumper (2003 Bullet 500 ES military) was used and abused when I bought it. The original owner brought it over from India and changed the speedo, so I have no idea how many miles are on this thing. It was in rough shape. Barely ran, barely stopped, severely sun-beaten, rusted, etc.
One morning I jumped on it and got about a mile down the road when the bike stopped suddenly. And by that I mean the engine halted and the rear tire locked up as I skidded down the road at 40MPH. A quick grab of the clutch and I regained control. I knew something major had gone wrong. I tried the electric start and it would not turn over. I flipped out the kick starter and it would not budge. The piston seizing due to a bad oil pump wouldn't make much sense as I had only been riding for 5 minutes. I figured maybe the rod broke and got lodged in there, or the crankshaft bearings came off.
Well, when I started to dig into it, I discovered it was something I would have never guessed... The magnet rotor busted apart and lodged against the stator! I basically had to break the stator to get it off. The magnet rotor crumbled in my hands as I tried to remove it. But there is an inner solid steel piece. Once I got the stator off I was like "cool, I'll just slide the magnet rotor off and all is well." Nope. I tried pulling by hand at first, then I upgraded to tapping it with a rubber mallet, then I busted out a 3 arm puller and wrenched about as hard as I could. Still nothing. Anyone else encounter this before? Is there some kind of trick to this year/model? Any suggestions?