Gt550 kick start stiff

[Hawky416]

Good evening all
I’ve finally regained enough motivation to continue the rebuild of my gt550, which started out as a pretty rough bottom end and a frame.
I’ve had the crank rebuilt and the case’s vapour blasted, it’s pretty much all back together and I’m just installing the clutch and I thought I would just try the kick start lever and it seems very stiff, I haven’t put the side casing back on yet and now I’m worried that I May have to split the cases again
Any ideas?
Thanks for reading bit of a long post !!

[Alan H]

Where are you based? I have a 'spare' 550 engine we can split and check to see what you might have missed/misaligned/mis something elsed......
I'm near Barnsley, South Yorkshire.

[Hawky416]

Morning Alan
Thanks for your reply, I actually have 2 more bottom ends which, in hindsight maybe I should have split and copied! I was just wondering if anyone had come across this or maybe it’s normal? I didn’t have a kickstart lever on any of my engines. I’m pretty convinced I’ve done something wrong so I’m going to have to split the cases again

[jabcb]

Could you more fully describe the problem?

Does the transmission turn easily? Can you spin the transmission & shift through the gears?

[badgereng]

Hi Hawky, I had exactly the same issue during the rebuild of my GT380.
Luckily I tried the shaft before re-installing the engine and caught it whilst on the bench.
I had the bush on the end left hand end of the kickstart shaft misaligned to the spigot on the crankcase half.
The bush had two dimples in when I split the engine instead of one. The second dimple was actually a mark that had been made when a previous owner had rebuilt the engine and tightened the two halves together with the bush not in its correct position.
Stupidly I picked the wrong dimple to align the bush / spigot to upon re-assembly.
I could get the kickstart shaft to spin freely by just slackening the crankcase bolts around the end of the kickstart shaft but it would immediately tighten again when they were torqued down.
Unfortunately the only fix was to split and pop the correct dimple onto the spigot.
A learning experience for sure!

Pete

[jabcb]

I found it easiest to leave the sealing plug out, and use a little spring clamp to hold that left-side kickstart shaft bushing in the correct place.
After the crankcase is bolted together: remove the spring clamp, coat the sealing plug OD with ThreeBond case sealant or assembly lube, and it easily taps in place.

On the GT550 cafe build, I tried a few other ways and didn’t get the bushing to line up correctly.

[badgereng]

So happy that it’s not just me that struggled with what is a simple piece of kit