Okay, so I've got an 86 savage. I love the girl but I'm getting ready to put a bullet into one of us.

In the last couple months I've replaced the voltage regulator because the battery was barely seeing a voltage differential when I had the bike rev'd way higher than I would normally put it while riding. That got it some better but I think that I'd done too much damage to the battery from flat lining it too many times.

I still wasn't seeing as much juice after having swapped the regulator as I had expected so I retested the magneto, the readings that I got were 107, 104, and 98. I know that the Clymer says that they should all be over 100 but I figured that 98 wasn't that far under and that it was probably just a bad wire... I learned better.

I week or two after this I had some moron cab driver bolt out in front of me and I slammed on the brakes to avoid hitting him. I don't know exactly why but the bike stalled and when I went to start it again, still rolling, I got some absolutely horrible sounds. Like grinding gears. I pulled over and she wouldn't start, just gave me a free spinning sound when I hit the starter. I managed to run start her to get home but she hasn't started since.

Since the starter engages I knew it wasn't that so I pulled off the left side of the crankcase to reveal a wonderful collection of missing teeth on the starter driven sprocket. I shouldn't actually call them missing, I found them all deposited either stuck to the rotor or else sitting in the bottom of the crankcase. The inside of the rotor is marred and the stator is definately on its last legs. Since I've accounted for all the teeth I'm not worried about chunks of metal circulating through guts of my bike.
I've replaced the damaged gear and put the old girl back together again. Put in a brand new battery and had the hopes of going for a quick ride in the cool sunlight today.

I hit the starter button and it spun a couple times (I'm pretty sure that I heard a chuff but that could have been wishful thinking) before it stopped. And by stopped I mean, ther is no engine noise, I hear the decompression switch and the starter solinoid go and then the headlight dims and the neutral light fades almost out.

I've pulled the starter again, thinking that perhaps that could be the culprit. It fires over nicely.
I tried to run start it but as soon as I let the clutch out the back tire locks up.
I know that I'm missing something, or that I must have put something back together improperly but I can't see it cause I'm too close to the issue.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I know you guys have a wealth of information because I've solved a lot of other issues just from watching the forum and searching before.

Thanks in advance.

Others could tell you better, but seems like a push start could be very tricky because you'd have to hit the starter button at precisely the exact second that you dump the clutch, so that the compression is released on the very first revolution ?? At any rate, sounds like a compression release problem,.......not speaking of your charging problem.

Busted teeth issue, this is a common problem with the pre'90's bikes but never with the later bikes.  Why, cause they added a torque limiter to the gear train.

http://suzukisavage.com/cgi-bin/YaBB.pl?num=1288911670

I'm pretty sure it's not the battery. When I said brand new I meant, I put the acid in myself and charged it for the day before I tried anything.

I'm going to go try verslagen1's push assisted start. Though I'm not sure how well it will work since the tire locked up when I tried doing a run start with it before, and the starter doesn't seem to be doing anything. But I'm a long way from flat out refusing to try something.

So, I've tried the push start. When I push the starter it behaves the same as sitting still, dims the lights. When I let the clutch out in 1st and 2nd gear it locks up the back tire and that's the end of it. I know I was going fast enough to start it if it were just the battery because I've had to do that several times before.
Tried it in 3rd and 4th, with expected results. Nothing happened electrically other than the lights dimming. The only real difference was that the wheel didn't lock just slowed me quickly.

I took some readings on the battery just so that we could get that out of the way as an issue. 12.6V that dropped to 12 when I turned the ignition switch into the on position. This dropped to about 6 when I pushed the starter. Then returned when I stopped pushing the starter.

There's no way that I could have messed up the timing while replacing the starter sprocket is there?

Pull the spark plug,.. and see how it cranks...
If'n it cranks good like that, look into the decomp system...

Wow, if voltage is dropping to 6, you either have a dead battery, or a bad battery, or a starter motor w/ a dead short, or an engine or starter that is froze or locked up.

You can get an ammeter that simply sits on a wire, no need to open anything up & hook a meter in series. Theyre cheap, or were, bout 30 years ago when I got mine. Seeing the current flow will help, otherwise, Id haul the battery to a store that will test it. Its easy enough for a battery to not hold its voltage under load.