ec400 cold start issues
 

so i'm having little luck finding an answer using the search function here on this. dead cold my ec400 will crank, but there seems to be something taking the battery's cca away from the starter unless i jump start it with either my truck or my battery charger/tender(the tender has a 2a maintenance and 8a charge mode). i had thought the valves to be suspect(i'd like the clearance spec's if anyone knows them since the manual i got with the bike is conveniently missing the maintenance part), but off charger/jump start source the bike cranks over really slowly and acts as if something is taking amps away from the ignition. what should i look at? on charger/tender or my truck, it cranks fast just like it should. this isn't an old carb'd jap bike so i'm a little lost. also, the kickstarter is a no go. it won't let me kick it hard enough to spin the motor fast enough

Dead battery? :/

i don't think it's the battery cause it's brand new as of late october, agm, and was sitting inside for all of november and was only reinstalled after getting a new r/r almost 2 weeks ago and has been sitting with a tender since install. maybe it just doesn't have the cca that the bike needs.

i confirmed the battery is good today. i took it off the bike and tender last night and left it sit inside on my plastic tool box over night and went back to pacific power batteries to have it tested. it had 12.76 resting vdc and 150 cca with their testers. so i yanked the cam cover and checked the valves, and only 1 intake was a little tight. not sure since i don't have a proper mm feeler gauge. it has .152 and .127 mm leaves, and the .127 goes in, but the .152 doesn't, so that shouldn't be too far out on ONE valve to cause a hard start on a 4 valve one lung motor. so i then went through EVERY starter connection minus the key and start button connections and cleaned them including the battery ground on the engine and applying dielectric grease, and it still cranks slow, but the choke function seems to be a lot better since it seemed to be back firing through the throttle body. any suggestions as to what else to look at? could it be bad gas since i don't know exactly how old the gas is that's in the tank?

Near throttle you have small black switch, use when cold for starting

I change my starter motor to honda cbr 600 or hornet 600. its bigger and much more powerfull.

There seems to be a lot of evidence around the forum from a years ago that the type of issues you're talking about are alleviated by installing a manual CCT. The ACCT holds the cam chain too tight and saps rotation from the motor when the starter engages.

long time since I last updated, but I haven't really had time to work on this fix-n-flip project since I last posted. anyway, after some research, I did see that if the cam chain is too tight, then it'll be hard to start. and the last time that I had the head cover off, I noticed there was NO slack in the chain. so I have ordered and received a mcct, so that will be the next thing that I do to this. but like I said, once I cleaned all the connections to the starting system and the main ground that grounds out to the frame/engine(I can't remember off the top of my head, but the one from the battery), once it started it seemed to run a lot stronger. so I'm getting closer to getting this thing to cold start without being jump started

Try to change the brushes in the starter motor. It is same as Honda Hornet 600, I have the part numbers if you want

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yngvim,

go a head and throw those p/n's at me! it'll be useful to have if the mcct doesn't help. I might just pull the starter off and clean it too. I also think I need to look into the decompressor pin on the exhaust cam since they're known to be weak on the early 400's/450's.

Hi, l had the same symptoms as you with my 400 for the past 2 years. Always having to jump start from cold. I was using a cheap battery with supposedly 130cca. I've just bought and fitted a Yuasa and guess what, started no problem after not being run for at least a month. Try a Yuasa YTZ7S !!!

gordonian,


I suspected the battery at first, but I took it back to the battery store and there they verified the battery is good, and showed me with their tester unit that it had 150cca. and the battery had sat inside, off charger, over night.

Hi 60ratrod,
The only other things that I did was to fit a new brush plate in the starter motor and I ran a larger cable from the start solenoid directly to the starter motor. I also fitted a new exhaust cam and shimmed the valves. This didn't improve the starting really. I'm also running auto cam chain tensioner.

so the mcct didn't help with the cranking speed. and now the battery cable terminals are getting really hot, so I'm thinking that it's the brushes as previously mentioned. I would say it might be corrosion, but back in December I went through every single connection in the start circuit, except for the ignition switch and the start button on the right grip pod, and cleaned them and applied dielectric grease. I even did the main battery ground on the back side of the engine under the tank. I may also look into making new battery cables, incase there's a short or corrosion inside the wires that I can't see.

and I found the p/n for the brushes and got them on order from partzilla. so if my luck holds with them, I should have the brushes before the end of this week.

final update?
 

so i ordered the brushes, and of course they had to be the wrong ones. but i didn't find that out until i yanked the starter out after doing some metering to see if there was a voltage drop. i tell you what, that thing was gnarly inside of it. so after cleaning the crud out and scrubbing the brushes and brush contacts on the motor, i think i got it finally! and of course there will be photos:rolleyes:

http://i159.photobucket.com/albums/t...ps29zmawmk.jpg

http://i159.photobucket.com/albums/t...psmm09ttke.jpg

http://i159.photobucket.com/albums/t...psiknicrxm.jpg

http://i159.photobucket.com/albums/t...psni3rxslp.jpg

http://i159.photobucket.com/albums/t...psni3rxslp.jpg

Sorry for late reply, this is the numbers for the brush holder and the brush from Hondahttps://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...5efaf83d6d.jpg

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