There are some known issues with the 850/1100/1150 starter. I thought I'd post some photos to show how to strip the starter for inspection.
This is worth doing, especially as the symptoms of a starter gone wrong are very much like a dead battery. It's worth checking your starter before you lash-out on a new battery, possibly to find that with a nice new battery installed, the symptoms persist.
An assumption here; you know how to take the starter off the bike.
A starter:
First thing to do is to undo the 13mm nut on the solenoid that holds the brush-connection:
Then pull the connection to one side:
Next, undo the two 8mm nyloc nuts and remove them with the flat washers:
You can then prise off the end-cover (an old starter may need some persuasion. Use an old flat blade screwdriver and a small hammer to tap around the flange. Once it starts to move, it usually comes off quite easily).
You will then be looking at the two carbon brushes and the retaining spring.
The spring is quite strong. It needs to be hooked up to allow you to draw the the brushes out of the recesses. Warning! Try to keep control of the spring. Don't allow it to snap back violently into the plastic housing. The housing is quite brittle and is easily damaged.
You can then completely remove the carbon brushes. There are two small spacers above the brushes that are there to protect the soft carbon from damage by the spring.
Next, remove the plastic brush housing and the rubber gasket. You need to remove this to access the e-clip that holds the armature shaft in place. It's under a soft aluminium cap (in the centre here):
Gently remove the cap (it's just a push fit but may be gummed-up a bit with grease and dust). Be careful, its quite soft and easy to squeeze it out of shape.
You can then prise the e-clip out of the recess in the armature shaft.
There's a washer beneath the e-clip. It might look like part of the casing but it's there and needs to be removed now or you risk losing it when the two parts of the starter body are separated.
Now turn your attention to the point where the body halves are joined. You will see two soft rivets, or not (not to be confused with two locating pins). The rivets don't actually hold the two parts together (there's three long screws that do that). If the rivets are missing, the starter has been separated before.
The pick is in the hole where the rivet used to be:
If the rivets are in place, just take an old flat blade screwdriver or similar and slice the heads off (you may need to poke or pull the left-over bit out).
As mentioned, there are three T25 Torx screws keeping the two parts together:
Remove them. Two are long and one slightly shorter. The threaded section of the body is not deep so clean the exposed threads before starting to undo them otherwise if they are gunged-up and you damage the thread, there isn't much of it.
Now you can separate the two halves. Note there are two dowels that aid location. You can only pull the halves apart and you may find that there's a fair bit of resistance at first.
You can then draw the armature out of the body:
There will be some magnetic resistance but it will come out.
On the commutator end of the armature there is a bush and washer:
These usually stay put but be careful that they do.
What you will hopefully see inside the body:
What you don't want is:
The black clump is the remains of the magnets that have worked loose and wedged the armature (giving the slow churning that's often misdiagnosed as battery failure).
At the other end, you want to see this:
That's the oil-catch plate behind which are the gears.
What you may see on the face of the armature is this:
and correspondingly, this:
Here the oil/grease retaining plate has come adrift and fouled the armature. At first it's merely rubbed against the armature but it eventually stopped it turning and the short caused the holes to be burnt through the plate.
A short-term fix is to remove the plate and reassemble the starter. It will work fine without the plate but eventually the armature might become too contaminated with grease to work properly or the lack of lubrication in the gears may cause them to fail.
If all looks well, check the carbon brushes are not in need of replacement, clean the inside of the body to remove the accumulated carbon dust (I use brake cleaner, just spray it liberally and then blast it dry with an air-line). Clean the cuts in the commutator and grease the gears and shaft before reassembly (which is just the reverse of the above).
This is worth doing, especially as the symptoms of a starter gone wrong are very much like a dead battery. It's worth checking your starter before you lash-out on a new battery, possibly to find that with a nice new battery installed, the symptoms persist.
An assumption here; you know how to take the starter off the bike.
A starter:
First thing to do is to undo the 13mm nut on the solenoid that holds the brush-connection:
Then pull the connection to one side:
Next, undo the two 8mm nyloc nuts and remove them with the flat washers:
You can then prise off the end-cover (an old starter may need some persuasion. Use an old flat blade screwdriver and a small hammer to tap around the flange. Once it starts to move, it usually comes off quite easily).
You will then be looking at the two carbon brushes and the retaining spring.
The spring is quite strong. It needs to be hooked up to allow you to draw the the brushes out of the recesses. Warning! Try to keep control of the spring. Don't allow it to snap back violently into the plastic housing. The housing is quite brittle and is easily damaged.
You can then completely remove the carbon brushes. There are two small spacers above the brushes that are there to protect the soft carbon from damage by the spring.
Next, remove the plastic brush housing and the rubber gasket. You need to remove this to access the e-clip that holds the armature shaft in place. It's under a soft aluminium cap (in the centre here):
Gently remove the cap (it's just a push fit but may be gummed-up a bit with grease and dust). Be careful, its quite soft and easy to squeeze it out of shape.
You can then prise the e-clip out of the recess in the armature shaft.
There's a washer beneath the e-clip. It might look like part of the casing but it's there and needs to be removed now or you risk losing it when the two parts of the starter body are separated.
Now turn your attention to the point where the body halves are joined. You will see two soft rivets, or not (not to be confused with two locating pins). The rivets don't actually hold the two parts together (there's three long screws that do that). If the rivets are missing, the starter has been separated before.
The pick is in the hole where the rivet used to be:
If the rivets are in place, just take an old flat blade screwdriver or similar and slice the heads off (you may need to poke or pull the left-over bit out).
As mentioned, there are three T25 Torx screws keeping the two parts together:
Remove them. Two are long and one slightly shorter. The threaded section of the body is not deep so clean the exposed threads before starting to undo them otherwise if they are gunged-up and you damage the thread, there isn't much of it.
Now you can separate the two halves. Note there are two dowels that aid location. You can only pull the halves apart and you may find that there's a fair bit of resistance at first.
You can then draw the armature out of the body:
There will be some magnetic resistance but it will come out.
On the commutator end of the armature there is a bush and washer:
These usually stay put but be careful that they do.
What you will hopefully see inside the body:
What you don't want is:
The black clump is the remains of the magnets that have worked loose and wedged the armature (giving the slow churning that's often misdiagnosed as battery failure).
At the other end, you want to see this:
That's the oil-catch plate behind which are the gears.
What you may see on the face of the armature is this:
and correspondingly, this:
Here the oil/grease retaining plate has come adrift and fouled the armature. At first it's merely rubbed against the armature but it eventually stopped it turning and the short caused the holes to be burnt through the plate.
A short-term fix is to remove the plate and reassemble the starter. It will work fine without the plate but eventually the armature might become too contaminated with grease to work properly or the lack of lubrication in the gears may cause them to fail.
If all looks well, check the carbon brushes are not in need of replacement, clean the inside of the body to remove the accumulated carbon dust (I use brake cleaner, just spray it liberally and then blast it dry with an air-line). Clean the cuts in the commutator and grease the gears and shaft before reassembly (which is just the reverse of the above).