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Well the weather here in the UK has turned so I pulled the covers off the Beemer and charged up the Odyssey battery. The fresh motor hasn't been out on the road yet but I'm having trouble starting her up. The Valeo starter's growling at me and hardly turning the motor over -if I can catch it right it will start. It has the later fly wheel so I'm thinking that the Valeo shouldn't have too much trouble should it?

What does the voltage read across the battery when cranking? Maybe the battery is not up to it.

Kurt in S.A.

The battery is on charge at the mo - I'll take a reading later. Cheers

You say fresh motor, does that mean a rebuild? If so, did the engine turn over easy to set valves etc.? Connections on starter tight? Was the starter refreshed?

Right then - The charged battery reads 12.9v and 11.15v when cranking on MY old meter and that's better than my R100 Mono also with an Odyssey battery. Yes the motor has been totally rebuilt and I turned it over via a screwdriver through the timing hole - there's no centre stand! - but yes the motor is tight. I did take the starter apart and cleaned up what I could.
PS I've just gone out again and rigged up another battery to try Jump start it and still the same.

12.9 is good, my high compression R90 has an 8 tooth valeo and yesterday the starter relay stuck on and the motor continued to crank for at least a minute whilst I scrambled to disconnect the battery. Your brand new engine will be pretty tight possibly this is the issue

I took the starter out and it felt quite rough turning it over by hand so thought it might of been the magnets lifting so I took the planetary gears etc off and there was black swarf around the casing but the magnets were solid, I had another motor with broken magnets and so swapped the nose, gears and solenoid over and it turned over smoothly so put it back in the bike and Hey Presto - it works fine!