[Land O Aches]

Comrades:

I posted in the AVL section - they politely sent me over here.

original post:
Just picked up a 2005 Bullet 500 ES Military. 635 miles on the odometer, it's spent a lot of time sitting in a garage. Now to bring it back to life...

The guy I got it from was working on the sprag clutch when his patience gave out. The kickstarter doesn't seem to turn the engine over, it sounds like it's winding up the starter motor or something.

I've been through the kickstart drill a few times, nothing. The bike has a new battery. The compression release wasn't working, then I realized the spark plug was only finger tight. Now that it's tight, it still doesn't seem to work. I don't hear the air release like the ones on YouTube.

So, another barn find. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Lando
Seattle

[Ice]

 The whirring of the starter sound you describe is a classic symptom of  a jammed sprag.

 The primary case will have to come off to fix that.
It sounds like a daunting task but it's not that bad
I figure if your comfortable doing a break job on your car then a sprag is within your capability.

 The de comp not giving the wooshing sound is unusual. First thing I would check is the cable adjustment.

 

[Guaire]

Land 0 - check out this movie. I believe we have the same problem.
Cheers,
Bill
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=um-1TTlpctg

[Ice]

 The first 1/2 second of the sound in the video is the same as what my Bullet made the few times I shut the engine off with the key instead of the de comp.

 In mine the inertia of the flywheels pushed the piston up but not over TDC. The compressed fuel air pushed the piston back down and the crank backwards, engaged the sprag and turned the E/S geartrain and starter motor and briefly made the sound.

 For lack of a better term some of us call this " bounce back".

Hopefully someone who has experienced a locked sprag will come along to comment further.

[neil]

Hello Land-O
You and Bill have the same problem. Your sprag clutch / gears have jammed and probably have failed. This is a common problem with these old fashioned bikes, which were originally designed to be started with the kick start lever. Enfield tired to get modern by installing E/S ; a noble try but the sprag gears do not work well in large singles. Any backwards motion of the engine puts too much strain on the sprag assembly and causes failure.

Most of us who have experienced failure of the sprags have removed them from our bikes and use kick starts to get off. You can repair the electric start gears but in all likelihood they could / will fail again. This site has many posts on how and why.

Neil and Buzzy the Bullet

[Land O Aches]

Land 0 - check out this movie. I believe we have the same problem.
Cheers,
Bill
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=um-1TTlpctg

Yep, that's exactly how mine sounds. I've ordered the conversion kit from Nfield, but it's on backorder. So, since I've got the parts, I'm going to try installing a new sprag - stay tuned, and thanks for the video - worth a thousand words...

Lando