Did I just fry the starter motor?

[oldsecret]

Hello people!
I am new to this forum as well as to motorcycle owning not to mention wrenching on one.
For the purpose of learning something new I bought an old nonrunning GS400 (1977).
The previous owner said the startermotor was new and that it should be a matter of cleaning and/or tuning the carbs for it to run. Plus connect some wires. Some wires were original, some were new.
I think I managed to clean out all the little nooks and crannies on carbs, and after a good amount of hours hunched over both bike and wiring diagram trying to figure things out I think I'm good on wiring. For the most part anyways. I got the headlights, horn, bllinkers, stoplights going. I got the POS ignition switch assy sorted out. Previous owner had bought it new, but not original and certainly not on unlimited budget. The key insert part was made of plastic and fell apart. It was easily removed and a Phillipshead screwdriver was all I needed from there.
Oh, and yes, before all this I checked and found compression so I think that part should be ok.
Now, when I pressed the start-button I got the click from the starter solenoid but nothing more. I tried a few times and was happy to have gotten that far. Until it wouldn't make the "click".
So I took out the starter solenoid and disasembled it. Here comes a question guys! Inside this thing there's a short wirestub with a little protective "jacket" partially around it. It must have broken loose from the solder cuz all I can see is that it's supposed to be soldered in place where the yellow/green wire comes in. You know on top of the unit. OK, so the question: Am I right about that? Are those two guys meant to be soldered together?
After a bit of fiddling I managed to do just that so I hope I'm not totally out on the plains. I at least got the solenoid "clicking" again.
But now for the fun part!
You see there wasn't anything else happening. Just the "click" but no action in the starter motor. But there was 15 amp fuse between positive battery terminal and the solenoid. Fuse got fried. So I tried a 35A fuse with the same outcome. Now here I got real wise. Because the wiring diagram (from clymer manual) didn't depict a fuse there I decided to make a direct wire from + battery to the solenoid. I got the "click" and a kinda muddy sound from the starter motor when I hit the start-button, then a puff of smoke from the SM.
YUP! So I figured I fried the thing and decided it was time to call it a night.

Please confirm, and also please tell me NAH, no biggie! Easy to fix! :-D

Second question here though: What did I do wrong? Should I've kept a fuse? Does it matter on which terminal I put the respective wires? (There are two on top, on opposite corners)
And also, on the starter motor, there's one way to attach the lead wire from solenoid so that's good, but there's also this little nut on the business side of it, next to the rotary shaft. It was unused but I figured it had to be the place for a ground wire to be mounted. So that's what I did and the opposite end of that ground wire got fixed with one of the nuts fixing the starter motor. Was that totally lame??

Sorry, lot's of text here but I hope someone can lend a word of wisdom.

In advance, thank's and cheers!

[Big T]

The starter motor is well known to get clogged with debris and old grease, rather than "fried"

Remove the starter motor, put it nose down in a vise.

Soak the bolt end with penetrating oil

Remove the 2 bolts, generally a hand impact is required, noting that the bolts are JIS, not Phillips

Remove the rear plate, then the shaft.

Check the center to confirm the magnets are attached

Clean the front, center and rear interiors with contact cleaner

Clean the shaft with contact cleaner, then polish the commutator until its shiny copper. Confirm that the brushes are long enough

Reassemble with a dab of grease on the back and front of the shaft

You are correct on the solenoid

The starter grounds through the case to the main ground wire

Only the large wire from the solenoid attaches to the starter lug

[oldsecret]

Thank you for the reply!
I had the starter out today, pulled it apart and all checked good!
Then I put it back in it's cradle and tried to let the mounting bolts take care of the grounding.
Upon hitting the startbutton I got nothing but the "click" in the solenoid. Then I tried to run a groundwire from the mounting bolt into where the main ground from battery neg is attached to frame.
The starter motor rotated, not crazy like I expected, but like it was having resistance or something. I noticed it went counterclockwise (I guess that's ok.) BUT I got smoke again and the main lead between battery pos and solenoid got so hot the insulation melted. It's a decent gauged wire. At least I thought it was. I don't know the exact numbers there, but how thick should it be?

[oldsecret]

Yeah, sorry for asking silly questions here. After googling I found out the wire was too thin. Maybe it's a 10 gauge so I'll try with a 6 and see what happens.

[rphillips]

Not sure about wire numbers but a good rule of thumb, there's a good reason the big wire size coming off the battery to the solenoid then out the solenoid to the starter is so big!!! It's so you won't have a wire too small... You're getting there, keep it up.

[oldsecret]

Thank's rp! :-)