Ed, the flange gear being installed backwards moved the gear portion of the flange gear out of correct position by over half of the total gear width of engagement to the oil pump.

The worn oil pump had enough "drift" to complete the disengagement.

There are holes to the inside of the case assembly that are readily available to eat that little pin should it drop free during disassembly.   This may have been what happened.  

I will split the cases looking for the little pin as I am concerned as to its whereabouts.

==================

You have to take the clutch basket off to change your clutch plates.  Screwing up the orientation of this one part during that relatively straight-forward repair can kill your engine.

This is unfortunately true for MANY small components lying about this engine.  Ripping something apart should be done slowly and notes taken and permanent sharpie pen reference marks made so correct orientation of parts is maintained upon re-assembly.

Oh - you 2 are on either side of me in charlotte. And more ironic - I bought a savage in fayetteville this past St patty's day and parts for  my sv1000 the month before in hickory.
Cool.
Srinath.

Hi all!

Stimpy, what was mis-assembled on your oil pump?

The problem itself was a series of events that lead to noticeable power
loss about a year after buying my 97' w/only 3k miles on it back in
2004 (which was cheap for a reason as I soon found out) ... all was
caused mainly by overheating due to unmonitored low oil level and
very probably a bad break-in period by uncaring original owner (who
I never met or talked to), but the engine never ceased, just lost power.


The oil pump problem, it seems, was the same as yours and was working
only some of the time, or very inefficiently, as we disassembled the
engine to change the stretched timing chain and other parts that were
allready damaged prior to my purchase the oil pump and sprocket
looked normal, but on second inspection we noticed that it was put on
backwards according to our diagram and was missing a washer, at the
time could not figure out how this could affect the oil flow since it DID
seem to engage ...now we now it moves if not perfectly installed!

In any air cooled machine, efficient oil flow is EVERYTHING

I've mis-assembled more than one motor in my time, if you don't know if a part is missing or dropped into a rabbit hole during assembly it really isn't your fault. 51K on an engine before a rebuild is respectable. Looks like another quirk we all need to look out for.

Hmmmm ... can you see me scratching my head from there.  

I bought my '01 with a dead engine.  I had to take the lowwer end apart to clean and look for aluminum flakes from the melted piston.   I also took the oil pump apart to check for clearences, which I found out we don't have.  But it met the spec for my old Honda so I put it back together.  

I recall that the orientation of the pump gear was one of those "oh sh.t" moments of "which way did it come off".  BUT ... I vaguely remember that on my '01, if installed backwards , there were "fit" issues.     I'm scratching my head trying to remember what the issue was.  I think it either rubbed or it wasn't  aligned with the drive gear very well.  Leaning torwards the rubbing thought.....

I guess my biggest "learning" lately is how many of our older how-to supporting pictures in Photobucket have bit the dust lately.

We had better stuff to go by way back then.

How can we get long term support for our pictures that we put into tech threads?

If we can't figure out a good answer to that question, then we do have a long term problem communicating these little Savage twitches.

You guys have me worried now. Ive had the basket ioff, to do the chain. I dont 'member Nuthin about no pin..

Here is a new way to kill your engine by oil starvation.  Simply buy the wrong side cover gasket (or try to make a gasket off a wrong pattern).



What happens here is the oil flow is not contained in the side cover gallery and is not delivered to the head passage or to the transmission passage.  It oozes back down the side of the case to the sump.

Dead engine shortly thereafter.

(not my motor, somebody elses -- thank goodness)