Most m/c rear sprokets have rubber dampers to smooth out the power pulses.
The savage being a single has pretty hefty power pulses that are comparatively widely set apart from multies.

So you will be able to wiggle the sproket a bit.

Cool thanks.

Similar question regarding the rear sprocket. Went for a nice ride on Sunday. 2up with my wife and stopped for an ice cream. When we came out and suiting up I noticed a light metal flake dust on the powder coated inner rim of the sprocket. Is this normal? I am afraid not, but I don’t know. How should it be checked out?

Sorry about hijacking the thread, I just thought it was pretty closely related. Thanks one and all!

Grand Strand wrote on 09/14/11 at 17:47:08:

That's called "shmutz"... it's a dust from stuff rubbing against stuff...
Probably belt shmutz from rubbing on the pulley...
No worries... it'll take a thousand years to get enough shmutz off the belt to weaken it...
... could be some rubber cushion sprocket mount shmutz, too..
... again,.. thousand years...

It's a close relative to the brake shmutz on your front brake caliper...
... (but that one will shmutz itself out in 5 to 7.5k miles)...
...

Note... Jeepers!,... I just wrote all that and then noticed the word "metal" as in flake...
... so,.. check it with a magnet, it may just look like metal...  Shmutz can do that...
... if it is metal,... look for what would rub 2 up, that wouldn't 1 up...
I can only think of a fender bolt against the tire, but the tire would loose that fight, and you'd be back to rubber shmutz...

... is your wife missing her earrings or anything?... ...
..

Second only to our electrics, our drive train is as trouble free as anything you have see on any motorcycle (that does not have an oil bath shaft drive, they do pretty durn good too).

The wobble is normal, the shmutz could be from any of the aforementioned sources. I would like to add that I have had the mid-support for the belt guard come loose (it's tac welded), which started the guard rubbing on the rear belt wheel. This produced some shmutz, as well as a really irritating noise.
While we're on the subject, and since the thread has already been semi-hijacked, how bout that belt alignment?
If you do a search of RSD, you'll see a good many entries on the subject. One thing I did not see, and may have missed, was the effect of the rubber dampers in the rear wheel on belt alignment. Is it possible for them to expand and contract with temperature variations?
I have a slight squeek when I first start out. As the bike and belt warm up, the squeek goes away. I've also noticed that, when cold, my belt tends to track ever so slightly to the outside of the wheel at the rear (the source of the squeek); and after it's been ridden a while, and is all toasty warm, the belt is midline to slightly to the inside of the belt wheel (and the squeek is no more). It hasn't bothered me enough to check it much beyond the few times after I finally discovered what was causing the squeek. It's not effecting peerformance that I can tell, nor does it seem to be having any bad effects on the belt. I was just wondering if expansion and contraction of the rubber dampers in the rear wheel would cause that. Sorry for the hijack.