Did I screw something up?

[desertrefugee]

I thought you said something about a pop from the carburetor, vapor from the intake and then dead, dead, dead.

Doesn’t sound very starter-ish to me.

[gltriker]

Utilize two 10mm wrenches to remove the positive cable from the insulated post on the starter motor, too.
Unwittingly rotate the threaded positive post with one wrench, only, and risk breaking an internal wire attached to it.

Ground cable connector area under the left side upper motor mount bracket has been examined and cleaned up? Correct?

[cfairweather]

Don't waste your money on one of those cheap eBay $70.00 starters. The gears are made out of junk and they will break. PidJones has some good advice. Use high quality moly grease/paste on the gears. After you put it back together, make sure you can turn the shaft by hand. It will be hard to turn, but you should be able to turn it. If not, you have the gears in the wrong position when you inserted the end piece. Then, put it in a vice and apply 12 VDC from a battery to test it.

[zxWIZxz]

I'm curious if you figured this out? I'm having the same issue.

[redglbx]

Pull the plugs before you try to spin it, because If it’s hydro locked & you keep trying to spin it you may bend a rod. Start there and see if it will spin over, make sure you have it someplace that if it does have gas in it it won’t hit or splash anything you care about including you. I’ve seen this shoot gas nearly 20ft.

[kotkinjs1]

I'm curious if you figured this out? I'm having the same issue.

So there were a few different issues with the bike that I took care of.....starter was dead, replaced it. Head gasket blew, replaced it. Made all new spark plug wiring and boots and put new plugs in (E3 plugs and non-resistor plug caps), clutch diode I 'think' was bad, replaced it. Cleaned the frame ground connection. I think the coils are still good but I've got a pair of GL1500 coils waiting to go in when I get around to it. But it runs pretty well now. Holds idle at around 1200 (a little high but from what I've read about the single carb conversions they tend to do that) and runs smooth on the road. I think the electric choke needs to be adjusted though, it takes about a minute of keeping the throttle at 1500 or 2k before I let off it to keep it running and not stall out. When I learn how to do it on youtube I'll try it.

The only real issue it's still got is a finicky starter/sprag clutch when starting. Did the full bottle of Seafoam trick in the crankcase for a couple hundred miles and then changed to a full bottle of ATF with a very light diesel oil for another couple hundred miles then another full regular oil change but it still sticks about half the time. I might do one more oil change with some lighter diesel oil to see if that makes a difference. I think I've got Delo 15w-40 in there now. If not then I'll just ride it till it doesn't want to ride anymore before I decide if I can pull the engine to fix/replace the starter clutch.