Posted by frank on January 29, 2003 at 02:17:39:
Last fall I started noticing a kind of rough "rolling clicking " sound from the front drive pulley. At first I suspected the belt being to tight or rubbing against the side of one of the pulleys. After getting the bike off the ground and checking the belt I also checked the rear wheel without the belt to make sure it wasn't rear wheel bearings. Finally, last weekend I removed the front pulley and found out the problem. The spline teeth on the pulley was being slowly rounded oval by the shaft splines. The pulley was actually rotating "ovally" around the shaft! It wouldn't have been long before the pulley teeth would have worn to the poing that the transmission shaft would have just started spinning inside the pulley, thus no power to the rear wheel. I called the stealer..er, I mean dealer and they wanted 97.00+tax. I called a salvage yard. They found a used one for 55. I figure the odds of getting a bad pulley will be small because I doubt there are many Savages out there with anywhere close to 83K miles like mine.