Hi Everyone,
Bully fanatic wrote:Greg, you will find it is a lot easier to find dodo poo and rocking horse poo than it is finding an new or an old Italjet kickstarter. The early aluminium Gas Gas kickstarts fit very well, last longer and are much lighter. Steve Goode in sunny England has them. Graham.
Graham, sorry about delayed response here as I wanted to test my modification. Now that I have had a good ride, I want to share what I have learnt.
kickstarter problems as I see them are a little complex. Firstly the shaft protrudes where your foot needs to be and as already discussed 16mm diameter is a little small for 330cc. This is exasperated by the factory machined clearance for the pinchbolt:
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The 2 Scotties were on to this many years ago and had a batch machined without the groove, they ground a recess for the pinchbolt with an angle grinder maximizing strength. This spline is still used on KTM SX 50 and TM 85, but both of these kickstarters are unsuitable for a
, the latter one is nicely made, aluminium and long enough but is not a pinchbolt type. With the oversize groove, I am not going to drill and tap the end of the shaft and weaken it more for retaining purposes. So back to where I started with a broken knuckle with a good spline, after checking all the possibilities at our local wrecker, I decided to invert (yes backwards) the knuckle to get away from the standard setup of arm pivoting on one side and stopping on the other side of slot which must make it work loose. This lever (on left) was lonely in the box marked Euro but no one knew what it was off (anyone Know?)
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$30.00 including a pivot piece got me a longer arm that swings closer to the motor, I cut down the pivot piece and tigwelded it to the
knuckle. The advantages are about a 40 mm longer arm that swings closer to the motor which in turn reduces the bending action on the shaft.
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Now to explain why I wanted it to be longer and swing closer to the motor:
With a short kickstarter, the stroke finishes quite quick leaving nowhere to go at the bottom of the stroke, this is fine on modern bikes that have the stroke terminating on the foot peg but not a good idea without a positive stop. When the kickstarter is bent to clear the footpeg, it exaggerates the bending force at the bottom of the stroke with obvious results.
This is not to say that the early
kickstarter is not a good option, Mr Stout's one works Beautifully!
Here is the new setup:
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, ITALIAN BIKES, 
and 
all having their turn and considering we were alternating from Japanese and Spanish that 
