I still say starter motor is jammed or shorting. The relay will click on and off as the battery cannot supply sufficient charge as you attempt to start the engine. If the battery was gone the clicking would very rapidy diminish to a final click. How is your indicator relay? If your indicators are working fine, you can almost certainly say your battery is good enough to crank the motor over effortlessly.
With the motor jammed or shorting, you will notice a immediate drop to roughly nine volts as the battery cannot hold the amperage. If you say the starter motor is difficult to turn then there is something wrong, iffy in the least. It should turn freely with minimal but noticable resistance.
If you have a multimeter check the resistance accross the starter terminals. If you get minimal resistant readings you definately have a short. check again, especially where the positive terminal leads to the brushes. This is prone to wearing against the outer case and creating a dead short.

Thanks for the replies, so thats a multimeter, a starter motor & a battery required then!! could be worse, could be stuck in the middle of nowhere!! anyone got the needed bits to install a kickstart for sale??

Big T ....if you have any doubts about the starter motor just take it off, grab another charged battery, some jumper cables and give it a try...remember...the + is the screw on top of the starter motor.. if it turns than it's fine it doesn't turn have an electrician to look at it...

Well i took at the starter again today, stripped it completely and cleaned everything up. tried it on the car battery but nothing happened!, its still fairly tight to turn for some reason? Anyway a bid has been placed on another starter motor on ebay so heres hoping! cheers T

Did you try to turn it by hand when it was all disassembled?

yeah, its still not turning freely for some strange reason! i have tottally stripped it but im f%cked i can see where the problem could be! nothing melted or burnt and no wires touching. im hoping the xt600e is the same starter, looks the same to me. i have bid on one on ebay.

Does the little axle that has the small gear come out when it rotates? i'm thinking that whatever pushes the axle out might have had some kind of problem and it's that that might be causing your problem... take it to a Yamaha dealer to see what they tell you....

When you tried the car battery, did you get any sparking indicating the circuit was working? Did you jump it on the output side of the starter solenoid? ( I dont have an electric start, so I am not entirely sure about this)
If you have an OHM meter, you can check that you dont have an open circuit by going from the output side of the solenoid to ground, there should be some resistance, not sure what it would be.

Good Luck!

Steve

Hi, when i tried putting power through it using the car battery, it just reacted like there is a dead short(lots of sparks). i have,nt got an ohm meter yet, maybe nows the time to purchase one? still winning on ebay so problem may be solved !

It sure doesnt sound like an open circuit! Good luck bidding!

It is supposed to make some sparks because it ain't supposed to work like that :P ....but did it turn????

So
You removed the rotor ..
Looked at the brushes - checked there length
Checked the magnets were secure in the housing ?

If you did not I'm thinking the magnets may have seperated from the housing.

Bacardi, No it didn,t turn! and Frank, Yes i stripped everything, including removing the brushes, rotor and checking the magnets. all seems fine and brushes have very little wear. T.

Well if it doesn't turn it doesn't work. The why becomes irrelevant. Good luck on your ebay bid

Cheers, i,ll know at 11 0clock sunday!