grinding from gears and slipping / cold weather

[Wheelsick]

Hey guy's,
went to rip the alta on a cold morning, 10 degrees, turned on as usual with no prior issues. starting riding slow for a few minutes. then I here a grinding noise from the front sprocket area and bike will not go, I can go slow, but when I add throttle it seems to slip and grind ?
thanks for any help. I am imagining the gear oil being to thick and gears not engaging.

 

[bluefxstc]

Can you tell which side of the bike the grinding is coming from? I would try and differentiate between the chain sprocket on the left side of the bike and the reduction gear box on the right. No idea why it would be speed dependent. Might want to put the bike in the garage overnight to warm it up and see what happens. I have had my EX out when the bike is in the 30-35F range, but never at 10. Might also want to put it on a stand and see if you can feel any abnormal vibration in the motor or gear box with your hand, may help isolate the problem area.

 

[snydes]

It’s just a gear reduction so they are always engaged. Interesting though... definitely the first I’ve heard of anything like this.

 

[privateer703]

I'd pop off the reduction gear cover and see if you can see metal filings or damage to gear teeth.

 

[leeo45]

For those of you who have taken a closer look at the drivetrain internals than I have, what would happen if the coolant freezes? Hopefully nobody in the really cold climates is using water instead of antifreeze, but water turning to ice has an amazing ability to break things as it expands. DAMHIK

 

[Wheelsick]

Well. Went out today in -2 degrees. Left on the stand running at 20mph for a few minutes. Then had no issues on a 15 min Moto. . I’ll check coolant & pop off sprocket side & have a look. Thank you all for the support. I have not looked at coolant, is there a YouTube to check & flush/fill ? Searching now

 

[datadog]

That temp should not be low enough to affect 50/50 coolant, and there are no moving parts within the coolant jacket around the motor. The battery however, is not effective when its temperature is that low. Warming it up as you did is proper preparation. In the owner's manual, there is temperature recommendation. Alta recommends that you keep the bike in above freezing temperatures to warm up the cells before riding at temps that low. At ice races, the team kept the bike in a heated trailer.

 

[leeo45]

I don't know about YouTube, but the details from ALTA are on pages 76 through 79 of the owners manual. If you haven't already done so, you can download it from the RESOURCES section here at AoF or from the ALTA website.

There is probably no need to flush or refill unless someone had the bike before you and you are concerned they didn't use the correct antifreeze mix. There are also a few threads discussing coolant level, refilling, etc here on the forum. Do a search for coolant in the title. E.g. Low Coolant in new MXR

 

[Mark911]

I'd suspect a combination tight chain and mud pack between the chain and sprocket. A tight chain can mimic those symptoms.

 

[Wheelsick]

No mud, well lubricated w/proper tension.
No clue - might have been a rock wedged in or something. No idea- I’ll keep an eye & do some hard laps when it warms up. On a side note: It was real low on coolant, topped it off & sucked it out to proper level. Thx.
Hopped off the back to warm up the hands like I’m used to doing. HA- cold hands !!!!

 

[datadog]

I'm pretty sure it was temp and the battery was unable to provide proper joules. You can't take off at 10 F and expect full power with that cell.

 

[OneLapper]

Hey guy's,
went to rip the alta on a cold morning, 10 degrees, turned on as usual with no prior issues. starting riding slow for a few minutes. then I here a grinding noise from the front sprocket area and bike will not go, I can go slow, but when I add throttle it seems to slip and grind ?
thanks for any help. I am imagining the gear oil being to thick and gears not engaging.

Tonight I had the same symptoms with my bike.

Last night had to move my bike from my warm living room to my car trailer. The temps overnight were pretty low, maybe single digits. Today the high temp was 26. I got home tonight and before bringing the bike into the house I took it for ride around the yard. Temps were 19, the bottom layer of snow was hard and crunchy, the top layer was 2" of fluff, actually pretty good traction!

Six minutes into my ride the bike lost power and it felt like the chain or gears were slipping. Max speed was about 3mph. I called it quits and brought the bike inside the house to warm up. I'll try another ride tom'w night and see how everything works.

 

[Butch]

It’s supposed to be sixty degrees here today.

 

[OneLapper]

It’s supposed to be sixty degrees here today.

View attachment 2466

Meh..... who wants temps that hot? or views like that?