I bought my 05 used with 6700 miles and it always cranked and sounded great when cold but the starter sounded terrible when cranking when the engine was hot. Several 04-05 owners had/have this problem and many do not.
It made the noise with Rineharts and the std download, stock exhaust and SERT, and V&H TD headpipes and SERT.. With the SERT, I even lowered the cranking fuel numbers to the lowest allowable in every table over 100 degrees engine temperature.
The only thing the dealer did under warranty was to replace the starter drive pinion gear. Once at the dealer I started the bike at least 15 times when hot and never made the noise. I have lived with the noise but was finally getting worse as people would look at you at a gas station or bike event.
A couple of weeks before York I did the following:
1) Replaced the 10-102 tooth MOCO ringear with a 10-84 tooth ring gear set from Rivera.
2) Installed a Rivera jackshaft kit.
3) Installed a MOCO chrome starter.
After approx 1200 miles, it has been starting/sounding great when cold or HOT (knock wood).
The Rivera ringear is smaller in diameter than the removed ringear and the pinion gear is larger diameter. The teeth on the Rivera ringear are aslo spaced further apart.
The old removed jackshaft and starter pinion looked fine. The old ringear looked fine while mounted in the primary but once removed from the clutch basket you could see a few small chips and the gear pattern between the teeth didn't look right.
Hope this helps someone who has this dreaded cranking noise when hot. I don't know whether I fixed the problem or disguised the real problem?
For now, it has never sounded better.
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Topic: 04-05 Starter noise when hot-my fix (Read 2803 times)