So about a month ago I bought a 02 foreman 400. trx400fw (if relevant) didn’t have much experience with wheelers before all this, and am kinda stuck now. Previous owner 100% sunk it and he said it sat for about a year. Wheel bearings where shot. Back breaks were locked up. Solved those issues. Wasn’t getting spark. Battery is shot but electric start worked from a jump and so did lights. I’ve replaced the cdi box, the starter solenoid, rectifier, kill switch panel, ignition coil, and spark plug. Previous owner also said it smoked when it ran, I pulled the motor out, replaced the stator, and bought a 450 top end kit, cleaned the valves, new valve seals, etc etc. top end seems tip top, compression is great, current problem is when I try the electric start all I get is a click. Even on a jump. I thought maybe bad ground, all grounds were cleaned, still just click. I checked all the wiring since I remounted the motor and everything seems fine, really don’t know what to try next. I took the starter off and put the negative of the jumpers on the metal and positive to the positive of the starter and it spun like it works…. Please help I don’t know what to do lol
So in a recap the electric start worked before I pulled the motor off but didn’t get spark. Now for some reason the starter works when jumped off the bike but won’t do anything except click when on the bike….
side note, when on jumpers the battery was getting 13v, and the starter was getting 3v on the crank
update: new starter is in, I ran tests with the multimeter and at this point, I have a scary feeling that I might not have set the starter gears correctly when reinstalling the stator. But I’m honestly not sure…. Battery is still being jumped everytime, was getting 12 ish volts to the battery, same current to the solenoid on the battery side, and I got 3.4v off the starter side of the solenoid on the crank. Switched back to original, 12 off the battery side, but this time 4ish volts off the starter side on the crank. What could be happening? I’ve done so much and am running out of ideas
Update: Ended up being the idler/starter gears. resolved that problem, now back to the initial no spark. almost everything has been replaced now, starter, battery, stator, cdi box, rectifier, starter solenoid, ignition coil, spark plug, and kill switch/light panel. The only other thing I can think of is the wiring harness, everyone keeps telling me to bite the bullet at this point and take it to a shop, but I believe I can figure it out, I'm just not that good at diagnosing, nor do I have any experience with fourwheelers. Any ideas will be greatly appreciated.
