I've been in the process of getting my Dream to work for the past month now...I've rebuild the carb and replaced the points, but now I'm having problems trying to start the bike.
When I hooked the bike to the battery, as soon as I turned the switch to the 'on' position, I could hear the starter making clicking noises and could see the crank trying to spin. So now with the bike trying to start itself, I assumed that this was an issue with the starter button (or missing starter button in my case)...so I unscrewed the assembly and just let it dangle in place. When I turned the bike on again, no noise or anything (although if i touched the handle bars with the assembly, it would try to start itself again).
So with the starter button assembly dangling..I then tried to kick start the bike, but when I tried, I was only able to kick maybe halfway down and there was a loud clanking noise.
If the key is in the off position, I am able to use the kick lever all the way...it's only when the key is in the 'on' position that I am unable to use the kick start.
Any idea of what's going on here? I understand that my description is pretty convoluted...but any help would be greatly appreciated.
Loud Clank when using the Kick Start
In the absence of a working, but obviously shorting, starter button, you could re-assemble the grip and just dis' the yellow/red trigger wire inside the headlamp.
Have you had the motor running at all? It sounds as though the clank occurs only when the ignition sytstem fires, which would indicate some kind of internal problem, like a seriously slack little / big end, or a piston crown detached. Pull the plugs and rotate the motor by hand, observing the pistons' rise, but more importantly, descent. I encountered a similar noise on my CB, after re-assembling the starter clutch; that just turned out to be my refitting of the stator, which I hadn't re-seated properly, and was present irrespective of the key position. Another simple test would be to remove the rotor (if you have the puller or correct size of bolt) and try your first-post operation again with the key on, but you'll need to remove the exhaust, casing & stator afterwards in order to re-fit the rotor easily. I pulled the plugs and watched the pistons descend, but I nothing really seemed out of the ordinary. I ended up taking a little break from trying to figure out what was wrong with the bike. So after a week or two of letting the bike sit, I tried starting it up again this past weekend. I turned the bike on...and really easily, I pushed down on the kick start to see if there would be some sort of resistance or clank. I didn't feel anything, so I just ended up hammering down on the kickstart...and who would have guessed it actually started. It only ran for about 3 seconds before dieing, but when I went to try to kick start it again, the clank started up again. So at this point I was out of ideas...I ended up bridging the starter relay, and the engine was really trying to crank. So now I'm I'm thinking that the engine is going to start up any second...but then i realized that smoke is coming out of the wiring! It couldn't have been longer than 3 full second that I had bridged the terminals. The bike looked to be a home for mice, and it does look like they did a bit of nibbling here and there. Could an exposed wire cause some issue with the starter that wouldnt let me use the kick start?
I'd find that scenario hard to swallow. On the smoking cable issue: which 2 terminals did you link to get the starter to spin? And from whereabouts in the harness was the smoke? PS: Just to get a handle on another aspect of the problem: if you take out the plugs and kick it over with the key on, does the clank still occur?
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