I have a 2001 Warrior that got hard to start.battery is full charge,hit the button it will turn slow and make a grinding noise.I checked the timing and when you put a wrench on the crank bolt to turn it you feel a tight grinding.Pulled the starter off and motor turn smooth.Replaced starter with a new one......same thing.
My question is what bearing could be down or bad?Could the starter clutch cause this?BTW if you bump start it or start it with a charger it runs good.

 

Sounds like it's either the starter clutch or one of the related gears is messed up. I never heard of one doing what yours is, but there's a first for everything. If the starter is good, and the engine runs fine when it's pop started, I can't think of anything else it could be.

But you say if you start it with a charger it starts? That doesn't make sense... unless you have a bad electrical connection somewhere that's not letting enough juice from the battery get to the starter. Check the connections for looseness and corrosion if you haven't already.

 

Starter clutch was messed up along with a bad CDI

 

how do you kno when your cdi has gone bad?

 

I checked all the starting relays,then checked for fire going into the CDI but no fire coming out (orange wire) to the coil.

 

my 99 Yam Big Bear had the same grinding noise when trying to start. i replaced the starter (found a company online that sold me a new one for 78 bucks + shipping) and it took about 20 minutes to change it. now it starts like a champ.

 

The starter noise was the starter clutch had gotten jammed and not releasing.Got that taken care of and it would spin free again(I did try a new starter too) CDI got it to fire.