When the engine died, there was no sound, clunking, banging, or anything. It just died as if the kill switch had been turned to the off position. If as you say it might be Goats syndrome, wouldn't there be noises from the magnet pieces banging around? Also, even if the chunks were in the way, couldn't the motor still be turned a little either way?

I have been using this shop for a long time, it is not a dealership. I have him work on numerous bikes and have no reason to believe he would be B.S.ing me. That just is not his style. He certainly does not need the business as he is swamped as it is because of his reputation for good work.

I will check the battery when we get the bike back in a few days.

Adios,

The goats syndrome thing as it happened to my bike...
About 300 miles or so before it went belly up... the bike was running sorta like out of balance or a loping wobbly feel mainly between ~4 and 6K rpm. The day before it didn't start I ran it 80 miles, and felt the same out of balance but no extra noises. The day it didn't start... OK the day after that... I opened it and saw the 1,000,000 pieces I just thought Oh that  jammed up the crank and didn't let it spin up... cos the tested fine and 2 weeks after .... I never took the battery out of the bike - simply cos You have to take the tank off to get the battery out on this bike.... cos its got a extension on the battery box and fits any battery you want length wise ... I believe my crank wasn't turning on the starter because of physical blockage... Now the magnet pieces can move after you ride and stop the bike, they can also move under trailering, and of course they can move when running and they will either get smashed further, or smash the rotor or stator further or smash somehting else, or move out of the way... making for more clunking... any or more than 1 of those can happen ... mine was on the quieter side... In your case... entirely worth checking out. A small speck between the idler and starter can prevent the starter from spinning, a nice hunk between rotor and stater can prevent it from turning, and needless to say a shattered rotor wont charge the battery well enough to let it turn a motor over.
Cool.
Srinath.

When did you change the oil last? When I first got my bike I rode a few thousand miles then it started doing exactly what you said. Would die when the clutch was pulled, very little power, wouldn't start when hot etc.....

I don't know why, but I changed my oil and it never did it again. My oil was trash, black and syrupy.

Howdy,

Got the bike back from the shop. The oil was changed just before we left for Arkansas for the weekend. During that weekend we added nearly two full quarts! Anyway, I pulled the left side cover off. Here are the pics:

http://twtex.com/linkfiles/GS500/

Everything looks to be in real good shape. There is a lot of grey goop in the bottom that is extremely fine metallic material. Nothing large and chunky. In any other gear system I have seen, this level of very fine particles is normal from general wear and tear. The magnets all look fine, no real obvious wear indicators. I pulled out the little gear between the starter and the big gear on the crankshaft. The starter spins fine. I got out my big ass wrench and tried to turn over the motor in the normal operation direction... locked solid. No amount of grunting would budge it.

The shop pulled the old plugs and when I got the bike, it had new unused plugs in it    I really wanted to see the original plugs to see if there was a lot of oil on them. I tried turning over the motor with the plugs out, still nothing.

Any ideas?

Adios,

Hard to say, I'd start tearing the engine down.  I think it almost has to be something internal messed up.   :dunno:

Howdy,

Well... we finally got a used engine installed in the bike tonight. It started right up and runs great. The engine was not real pretty when we got it. It looked like it came straight from the junkyard. We cleaned it up and had a friend paint it. Now it looks brand new. We swapped the valve cover from the old engine to this one because the cover on this one were in real bad shape cosmetically. When we pulled the cover off the old dead engine we found that the timing chain was broken  :x  What was left of it was all wadded up in the front of the motor. We will probably tear down the top end to see if there is any damage to the valves or pistions. If not, we may just replace the chain and see if the motor will work. The strange thing is that we still have no idea why the motor was consuming mass quantities of oil? If the timing chain were loose, could this create a condition that would let oil into the combustion chamber via the valves? The chain itself was still nicely coated in oil. No idea why it broke, two months out of warranty  :x

Adios,