This is the follow up - Part II, if you will - of where my previous post 'Mistakes Were Made' left off. As you'll recall, I rebuilt the engine of my 1974 Honda CB550K trying to find the source of a really annoying 'buzz' that you can hear here:

Possible Kick Starter Buzz

As I suspected, this was related to the kick starter, which of course is buried deep in the engine so that meant I was going to have to take it all apart - AGAIN!

That, I think, is the most aggravating thing about motorcycle maintenance - you hear or feel or sense something wrong, you take the bike apart, FIX it, put it all back together again, and you may or may not have solved the problem - but then another one crops up!  

In this case, that buzz you hear was actually hidden by a bigger buzz that was related to a misaligned cam chain tensioner that I had neglected to make sure was in the right place when I rebuilt the engine the previous time - and I was going to have to do it all over again!    

So I took it all apart - AGAIN! - and rather than whine like a little bitch about having to "take off the cables, take off the top end, take the engine out of the frame, take off the cylinder head, split the cases...". Rather than bitching about all that I'll skip to the chase and show you what was up.  

This view is looking UP into the bottom of the engine (it's on the bench upside down) before I undid everything and split the cases, and it was as I feared - you can see the kick start mechanism (circled in yellow there) is meshed with the larger sliding gear on the right. When the kick starter is operating normally, that gear should be separate from the driven gear seen on the left!  

There's a little ramp under that sliding gear, and the sliding gear itself has a little nub on it that is supposed to ride up on this piece here, especially that straight piece behind the "U" shaped piece: 

Near as I can figure, that upside down "U" shaped piece of the stay somehow got bent, preventing the sliding gear from sliding all the way up to where it's supposed to be, keeping the teeth of the sliding gear in contact with the driven gear and making that annoying buzz! Here's a bigger picture of the gears meshed together: 

When the kick starter is at rest, those gears should be separated - when you kick start the bike, they mesh like this, allowing the driven gear (on the left, there) to drive the transmission gears and start the engine. When the kick starter comes back up after you kick start the bike, that sliding gear is supposed to ride up the little stay 'ramp' (to the right) and separates the sliding gear from the driven gear... (you get all that???) 

What I did was, I took out the kick starter 'stay' and simply re-bent it back to where it should be - in this picture below, I put this piece in a vise and gently tapped the area circled in yellow flat first, then tapped the red part back to a more vertical position.

This allowed the protrusion on the sliding gear to slide back up fully to where it should be at rest, clearing the driven gear and getting rid of that annoying buzz...And There Was Great Rejoicing! Here's the video...

https://youtube.com/shorts/PQSNhz_EuwA

So there you have it; if you have a similar 'buzz' you can't figure out, check your kick starter and it's sliding gear, it might not be sliding back up to where it needs to be. 

Aaaand now I just have to put the engine back together - AGAIN! 

ALTHOUGH...! I was kind of glad this annoying buzz made me go back in, because I did find a mistake I made putting it back together the previous time. 

When I was taking all the shifter stuff off the right-hand side here, I discovered that I had neglected to put the shifter armature screw back in correctly - see that big hex bolt above the spring there...? The one with the big scrape on it...? 

What looks like a washer is actually a little 'cup' that bolt goes through which helps connect the shifter arms...well, 'Mr. Attention-to-Detail' here neglected to make sure that little cup was seated correctly when I put the clutch basket back on! See that wear-ring around the back of the clutch basket here...??   

Now go back up and look at the bolt...notice anything? Yeah, because I neglected to make sure that bolt was seated correctly, it stuck out just enough to rub the back of the clutch basket! Oh, it looks worse than it is - no harm done - but I'm sure that was contributing to the noise too. Egg on my face much??