What's wrong with my rotor/starter clutch assembly

I believe you floivanus..no such keyway on mine

You should replace anything galled and the chewed up thrust washer, if you machine it you may have clearance issues, next what manual are you using? The haynes and other non oem manuals have discrepancies and are not nearly as precise. Ill try to go over what you have posted and help you any way I can. You have been given good advice thus far but knowing what to listen to is a whole other problem.

floivanus wrote: Swest there is NO woodruff key on the 1000's, none past the 76 kz900; did away with it and used another larger bolt in the crank snout which leads to people cranking them down to hard and galling the crap out of the thrust bearin aurface (which SHOULD not be tight enough to stop rotation, the only drag at all on the starter clutch is from the rubber boot)

79-80 crankshaft ends are different which stops the interchange of parts between them, but the hub of the flywheel is steel, deforms less and takes a higher torque spec. They didnt really change the design when they omited the woodruff key.

I see that in my book. That was my next question. If there is no key slot than it's the newer version. Someone obviously installed a early model one, it didn't work so they sold it. There are two threads with the same problem. When I was wrenching, I'd wind up buying bikes that the son had taken apart and the estimate was too high or parts missing. Guys would butcher a bike then give up. In these cases, it probably was a accident so the parts were bought for the wrong year. Happens all the time.
Question; Are the newer style rotor's harder to come by? That could be the problem.
Steve

seanbarney41 wrote: Here is the the stator and rotor I have. Are these correct? I know there are different stator/rotor combos where the rotor fits around the stator but I don't know what year motors use these. Could the taper on my crank be wrong for this stator?

DSCN0278 by seanbarney41 , on Flickr

DSCN0281 by seanbarney41 , on Flickr

I snapped the center bolt on to the elternator and replaced it with a 10. Much harder, tighterk,
less potential for a rotor spinining on the crank

I've measured the clearance for my rubber dampener using a piece of clay.



My clay measurement 6.23mm and my dampener measurement is7.05 (2**) I'll shave the rubber dampener a bit and see if it will work. But I think the problem lies here



I think the old washer ground up leaving these marx.and now the new washer might be flexing and causing the thing to bind up a little.