Metal shavings in bendix and stator gear
 

Last ride my starter wouldn?t work at all and made a horrible grinding noise and wouldn?t engage. At first I thought it was from the first picture of the broken lead on the starter. Just figured the starter wasn?t getting enough juice to turn everything because of the bad connection (maybe this is what caused the next problems?). Today I pulled the stator cover off and saw metal shavings on the magnet. Then I looked at the ring gear around the stator and the teeth are worn and have metal missing from them. Very noticeable on some teeth. Same with the bendix gear. I recently did the wet mod but have ridden a few times since then and the starter had worked great until this last time. When I pulled the cover the oil was clean and the gears all are lubed. Any ideas what could?ve caused this?

Mine looks the same, no idea if it's normal or not

You have it on ring gear and bendix? Have you ever seen metal shavings?

Yeah I have seen a few bits in the case, the dealer I spoke to said it was fairly normal with the break in of that gear. That being said, my starter doesn't work currently.

It looks like the wear is on the outer edge of the stator ring gear. If so, it may be that the bendix is not being spun up fast enough to throw the driving gear out far enough to fully engage in the ring gear.

The broken terminal on the starter is repairable if you are happy to strip the starter and either repair or replace the electrical contact assembly board underneath. Check Jeff Slaven's video about servicing KTM starters as I believe it's the same motor and there are useful tips and tricks on the video. Take care to mark up the main barrel and ends of the starter so that it all goes back together in the right order. If you don't, the magnets will be misaligned and the starter will either be weak or spin backwards.

There are threads on here about polishing the starter housing to reduce friction in the drive train. Worth checking whilst it's all apart.

What you have is common to all bendix type starters. Before mechanical shift fork type starters became an industry standard, all your automotive ring gears would have the same type of wear. Some are worse than others mostly due to metallurgy differences, but cam angles and teeth profiles also change how they operate.

Automotive starters have hardened teeth on the bendix pinion running against steel ring gears. Shift fork starters have positive engagement and work way better. The real problem with the bendix style is getting teeth engagement before the pinion is spinning too fast to mesh easily.

It is. I have seen three (including mine) so far, they all look like that.

ok so what did you do to fix the issues im have similiar if not the same issue my bendix an stator gear have some wear on them bike only has 50 hrs on it but when i press start button it just squeals but if i pull bendix out everything works great

On the older bikes at least you can undo the crank nut and pry the gear off the flywheel posts. Then rotate the gear 60* and push it back in place. This puts the teeth with the heaviest wear in a different location. The engine usually stops against compression so the teeth wear more at that spot.

I polish the burrs off with a buffing wheel. This reduces the amout of shards that are created.