I recently bought a clapped out 2004 ds 650 baja with plans on fixing it up and found some nasty shavings on the drain plug. The night I bought it the starter made a horrible grinding noise and stopped turning the engine over. When I took off the stater/ignition case the teeth on the gear connected to the starter had been rounded off a few millimeters and one of the idle gears between the starter and the flywheel had a tooth missing (I later found it). I'm hoping that is what the shaving are from but I am new to the sport ATV world so idk. I bump started it twice and ran it for a few minutes without checking the drain plug thinking that when I took the case off it drained all the oil so I simply added more, checked the level, and called it good. Any way be as harsh or polite as you would like because I know don't know squat about these sport atvs.

 

the starter will not put shavings into the oil. Starter is on the outside of engine separate from oil.. That looks like alot of brass shavings so i would be thinking main bearings or bushings somewhere in the engine. Hopefully the previous owner sold it cheap as they more than likely knew the engine was in need of a rebuild.. I would strip the engine and find the source of the shavings and rebuild.. If you do it now before it completely fails it could be the difference in a few hundred in parts or a complete engine