Here's what I did on both buggy and truggy. Its been working fine so far, I plan on getting bump plates on both soon. Until then, is this ok to do? Sometimes I get tiny bubbles coming out between the shaft and te bushing, probably loosing some power.

those bubbles are signs of it leakin, so yes, loss of power. i probly wouldnt do it, but then again thats not my call

Thats what I do
Just seal it with RTV sealant if you have some laying around

What will sealer do any good on a moving part? I assume it will just break loose and leak again. My bushing is leaking really bad but it's a moving part and even thick grease didnt seal it.

maybe he ground off the lil groove the crank catches on so that the 2 werent touching

what bubbles? Do you mean rust?

codeblack- thats what im talkin bout

Better chance of failure, I wouldn't do it.

If I were in your situation, I would've just waited for the dead backplates to arrive because I wouldn't want to take any risks as far as anything happening in result of engine components being exposed. You never know what can happen and it might turn out that you need to get more than just a couple of backplates, you could be replacing something in the engine that went. Who knows...

Dude I my be wrong ,, it happens,, but if all your doing is runnin your engine without the pull start on it then you have no worries, plenty of people do that on here. They use a drill to start their motor and pull off the one way bearing after it starts, but if you don't have A back plate on there then that's another thing,, It keeps the internals in place in the motor itself. But some engines are different as well and the back plate does nothing but provide A mount and place for the crank to stabilize. As for the leaking so what? The pressure is above that in your head anyway so it does not affect performance, Open up your motor some time the only thing in the bottom is the crank and arm, nothing in the bottom would hurt performance short of A breakage,, and that's gonna hurt it anyway so... think of it this way if you put on the crank cover/back plate and the pull start do you think they "seal" up the back end? No Like I said there's no need , just relax you are fine OK have fun bash and when that motor does go get another by the looks of it it won't be long.. GOOD LUCK

The big thing you're forgetting is that the crankcase is also where the air fuel mixture is introduced to the engine and is pressurized on the downward stroke and then goes into the combustion chamber when the intake port is exposed.

Personally I can't see that small leakage making much of a difference in your performance compared to the volume of air being sucked in and pumped through the engine.

That said, I did just buy rear non-pull start backs for my Force engines on my Ofna buggy - mostly because I hated the pull start, it always melted on the exhaust manifold, and the buggy looks cleaner without it.

Could have just run without the pull start mechanism on it (but retain the back) but the new backs were cheap.

Dave

Yes, that is perfectly safe to do. The engine is completely sealed - well, except for the small leak that you are experencing. But, that leak would be there wether the starting sytem is attached or not. There are no engine internal parts exposed. The comment about the pressure in the crankcase is valid though. If you start to develop eratic tuning or overheating symptoms then that's the first thing that you need to look at.

If you go with a bump start backplate you may (probably will) have to change the crankshaft too