| Author | Message | ||
     Hoser |
Hey Bill : Number two pic , the dogs look , .....um , funny , not funny hahahaha , .... funny peculiar. That mainshaft shows signs of corrosion and pitting as a result of corrosion , see archive through march 07 / 03 . The two needle bearings pressed in to 5th gear can rust from water vapour forming in the transmission cavity , these bearings don't see a constant shower of lubricant either to flush and clean them. Eventually the needle bearings will damage the shaft to the piont that the shaft seizes to fifth gear the transmission will then seem like it is locked in 5th !, of all those pictures that last one concerns me the most , of course I'm not there to look closer so I can't say for sure what you need to replace. | ||
| Spooky |
Bill, Your transmission is toast. Here is a list of what you may or will need. Mainshaft Inner and outer 5th gear mainshaft bearing 2nd gear mainshaft 2nd gear countershaft + bearing 3rd gear mainshaft + bearing 3rd gear countershaft Retaining ring(3) Thrust washer(2) These are the only things I can think of right know. Somebody else want to step in on this. Eric  | ||
| Jim_witt |
Nice wear pattern! -JW:>  | ||
| Reepicheep |
Keep 'em coming... Hoser... the camera is a super macro mode, it will blow up a dime to completely fill a frame, and has the flash off axis. It looks much worse in the picture then in person. How hard is it to get the corresponding bearing for that shaft out of the case? I am inclined to risk just cleaning up the shaft, but would like to replace the bearing. Spooky... wow! How on earth did you tell which is which by the pictures? I'm impressed, and checking the worn parts against the manual, you nailed it. One of the four is marginally servicable, but I will probably just do all four and be done with it. Why replace the bearings with the gears? Is it just because they are cheap and I am in there anyway? Might as well I suppose. I priced a few pieces, it will probably end up running me under $240 in gears and another $50 in misc parts by the time I am done. It sucks, but as "toasted transmissions" go, it could be a lot worse. I am suprised this is so beat up after only 15k miles. I didn't think I rode it that hard. Shoulda switched to Mobil 1 sooner. Thanks again. I am still open to more opinions. This board rocks. Bill | ||
| Spooky |
Bill, I'm having the same problem as you, with 2nd gear. The only problem is I own a Blast. I will have to drop the engine and split the case. I would replace the mainshaft and bearings no question asked. The 2nd and 3rd gear bearings need to be inspected really close if they are going to be reused. Replacing the bearings is just cheap insurance for later on down the road. Eric | ||
| Hoser |
Bill : The bearings , two of them , are inside 5th gear , supporting the right end of the main shaft , 5th gear being the output gear where the sprocket is fastened and remains in the case when the cluster is removed . To service those bearings 5th gear has to come out which also means the ball bearing in the right case must be changed as well , down side is special tools are needed for removal and installation , the needle bearings have a specified installation depth that is performed in a press with the appropriate driver. I have one of those tools at home and can supply measurements if you know a a friendly machinist that can turn one on a lathe for you. The ball bearing in the case is removed after 5 th is pulled out , again using kent moore special tools , these can be made too , look in your service manual too see what these tools look like . A hydraulic press is a must for dissassembly / assembly of the cluster , as are correct snap ring pliers. As you can see from this a sizable collection of tools are needed to overhaul these transmissions !!. If a guy was to only do this once or twice in a lifetime it's hardly worth the investment , knowing the right people helps , doing this for a living provides access to all of the above , and having a lathe/mill at home I often make service tools ( some times as gifts ). Most of the required tools are available from jim's ,and me being a bit of a tool junkie I have a good selection of those too. Best of luck with your repairs. Eric : Tell me how you condemned Bills transmission so quickly , yes I can see a few dogs with some wear on them but without being there and seeing / touching them I wouldn't say both pairs are toast just yet , the flash on Bills camera has made things look worse than they probably are . Blast tranmission overhauls are no picnic , even more tools are required to rebuild one of those !! , not to mention the removal / disassembly of the engine !! be prepared for an ugly job. I agree with your statement about bearings being cheap insurance , when all the required bearings , clips , seals / etc and the correct tools are on hand the rebuild proceeds nicely. | ||
| Jmartz |
Repeecheap, I have a trans that you could use. It is the result of my having replaced it with a Baker 6. Let me know if you want it for parts or whole. | ||
| Spooky |
Jeff, I gave Bill a list of what I felt may or needed to be replaced. I don't like to halfass things like most dealerships and then ream someone a new a$$hole just because they guessed something looked alright. I would replace the mainshaft, 2nd gear set, and all needed bearings. The 3rd gear set is a maybe. Like you said with out the transmission there in front of you, its hard to tell what could be wrong. I'm just going by the pictures. The dogs on the 2nd gear mainshaft look rough and rounded. No flash from a camera will make things look worse. I'm well aware of whats involved in the overhaul of the transmission in the Blast and while I'm at it, I'll have the case bored so I'll have two 600 engines for my Blast. Eric | ||
| Reepicheep |
Thanks for the help Spooky and Hoser... I appreciate both of your input. No questions spooky, if I had to split the cases to get at this tranny, you made the exact right call, and your list was dead on for the parts that show wear. That being said, the fact that I am so cheap, and that that cartridge comes out SOOOOO easy on the tubers (literally only $10 in parts, and maybe 90 minutes to have it on your bench), means I will probably just do the four gears, the two pairs that engage when I see my problem and that show significant wear. I will refinish the end of the existing shaft to clean and polish it back up, pack a little bit of grease in there, and put it back in. When I lock into 5th, I will know why, and just pull everything back out and send it to a tool geek like Hoser  Jmartz... Thats tempting. I am guessing that I will be into the project for around $250 in new transmission parts. How many miles on the tranny you have? Obviously $250 is way cheap for the whole cartridge assembly if the tranny is low milage / good shape, and I could have the parts in hand monday. Perhaps we oughta save yours for someone with a truely trashed tranny. That being said, if you are sick of looking at the thing, we can talk. Email in my profile. Thanks again everyone, you are awsome! Bill | ||
| Hoser |
Eric: I'm not sure if your post was intended to offend me or not , it did. The " I don't like to halfass things like most dealerships " bit was un necessary . | ||
| Spooky |
Jeff If I offended you I'm sorry. I hope you understand where I'm coming from. If you find something that can become a problem later on down the road, fix it now while you have it out or it could cost lot more later on. Eric | ||
| Hoser |
Thank you , I was in a bad mood after being attacked by a swarm of wasp's , while using the weed whacker this morning , several stings to the legs ( burrowing ground wasp ). Preventive maintenance does pay off , adds to resale and increases longevity , you said it man " bearings are cheap. | ||
| Reepicheep |
More help...  Hoser and Spooky nailed it... Hoser especially. I stuck my finger down deep into the 5th gear assembly, and it came out with a rusty muddy mess of disintigrated needle bearing parts. Grrrrrrr! So looking at the manual, I see three special tools. The first is just to remove the assembly, and that looks like an easy one to "roll your own". I think I could build my own easily and get the assembly out (which destroys the bearing even with the real harley tool). Or I could just buy the harley tool, it's just a steel plate with a couple holes and a bolt, I doubt it is that much. The second tool allows the bearings to be pressed into that 5th gear assembly. That will have to be done at my dealer, but that is done off bike anyway, so no big deal there. The last tool is the bearing install tool. That is the one I wonder about. It looks like I might to be able to kludge it with a socket of the right size, and a bolt, or perhaps the harley tool is not that expensive. Whats everyones opinion on it? So far, it looks better to just do it myself, but just barely, as opposed to put the bike in a truck and drive it 100 miles round trip. Anyone done this? Better to just finish the job, or to just take it in? If it is even, I would rather do the job myself. I suppose I will also replace the shaft that goes in there... the one pictured above. I am slowly getting out of denial. I will replace all the needle bearing sets I pull as well. Jmartz... that now probably pushes me to the $300 or so level for parts I need... we in the price range of what you want out of your old pulled 5 speed cartridge? Sigh. At least I caught it before major damage happened... if you can say the shaft and bearing is not major damage. Bill | ||
| Reepicheep |
Hey mechanical engineer types... What is the issue with reusing a pitted shaft / counter shaft with new bearings? If I were to clean up the shaft really well, including a final polish with 1600 grit paper, and clean up the races where the corresponding bearing runs in the same fashion, and then reassembled with new bearings, why would this be bad? Obviously, if the diameter of the shaft is no longer in spec, I am screwed, but it seems to me that the pits, so long as they were cleaned and polished, would simply diminish the surface area being loaded slightly and not otherwise effect the bearing much. If I pull the above shaft, I am going to need to get yet one more special tool, and spend quite a bit more time and effort. The tranny is easy to pull, and as Hoser so clearly called, the design sucks, so whatever shaft I put back in there is going to have a hard life anyway, and probably going to have to come out every 15k miles regardless. I fully expect to pull whatever I put in there back out in another 15k miles and find another mess of oxidised bearing and beat up shaft. I don't really care if I turn a 40k mile bearing into a 15k mile bearing, as the design of the tranny has done that for me already by trapping water up there at the seal. I can get the tranny assembly out of the bike in about 90 painless minutes, I don't mind pulling it. It does take a special tool to reseat the bearings in that final drive gear assembly, but it looks to me like that can all be done off bike, so I can just take the gear assembly to a dealer in hand. So I guess I am trying to understand if I can get one more "service interval" out of that current shaft, and want to understand the underlying theory behind the dangers of reusing some partially worn parts. Thanks everyone. Bill | ||
| Reepicheep |
Hoser... also, is there an easy mod to make to the main drive gear assembly to let a little more oil get in there to keep this from happening again? Is it really an oil circulation problem, or is the seal failing? Along those lines, I wonder if it would be possible to remove that seal, flush the needle bearings, then re-pack them with a heavier grease periodically, and then replace the seal? All without opening up the tranny? I guess you would want to do this right *before* you replace the primary fluid. (though had I done this to my bike I would have been flushing mangled bits of needling bearing into the tranny  ) Just thinking out loud. | ||
| Reepicheep |
ARGH. Just made the call. Part HD-35316-A (tool to remove and install the final drive gear assembly) $260. Sigh. It's just a bolt, a nut, a tube, and some washers. Guess I will build up my own. You destroy the main bearing when you pull it anyway, so I can break that up to make the install part of the tool. | ||
| Spooky |
Bill, Check with Hoser or here http://www.jimsusa.com/. Eric | ||
| Reepicheep |
Ugh. Parts total so far, without countershaft, $450. That 5th gear drive gear assembly alone was $114. Thats 2&3 gear on the driveshaft, 2&3 gear on the countershaft, main drive bearing, main drive gear assembly, and lots of little bearings, clips, and spacers. That does not include the tool, which I will build myself. Yuck. This one hurts. Bill edited by reepicheep on July 21, 2003 | ||
| Jim_witt |
Bill, Sure would be cool if you documented (with pictures) the whole enchilada and posted it on the BBS. I know I’d enjoy reading and viewing it. I just got a copy of Adobe Acrobat Pro (don't know how to use it yet) but would be more than willing to try it out with a project like that. -JW:> | ||
| Reepicheep |
Sure. I will document it and post it in a new knowledge vault entry. I may have to fake the dissasembly pictures though as it is already all apart. Just view the assembly pictures in reverse order It's an amazingly straightforward job. Just an expensive collection of parts unfortunately... | ||
| Hoser |
Bill I'm not aware of a way to improve lubrication to the fifth gear needle bearings , a cheasy design ? , yes it is , the old four speed tranys had a number of ways to feed oil to various locations in the transmission , c/s first ran in a bushing that had oil grooves cut into it's id , feeding oil to a drilled passage in the center of the countershaft , the left side was lubed by a cup pressed into the trapdoor , gravity feeding oil to the left end needle bearing. Those tranmissions were even cheasier than what we have today but in their own special way. The tool thing , ....... it takes years to gather all the things you need , then just as you start thinking you have it all , you realize you don't , or new technology forces further investment in tooling !!! | ||
| Reepicheep |
Thanks Hoser. Do you just assemble with 20w50, or given the fact that that little corner of the tranny will never see much oil circulation, do you pack the assembly with heavier grease? That's a $114 part, I hate to just throw it to the wolves again. Maybe I should just gently lay the bike on it's right side for 5 minutes once a week, and shake slightly.  | ||
| Hoser |
Bill: I use grease , you could use assembly lube , but grease seems to stay in there longer. | ||
| Reepicheep |
Hoser, or anyone else that has pulled that main drive gear... could you describe your 5th gear main drive assembly removal and install tool? I tried a rev 1 approach, and it was *not* pretty. Gotta get some thicker metal and bigger bolts. And maybe an angle grinder... But just to make sure... does removing that assembly require pretty significant forces? Like "more then you can generate turning a 1/2" bolt with an open end wrench" type forces? (reposted in the correct section, I accidentally posted the original question in the crank seal thread I started...) | ||
| Reepicheep |
For anyone following the discussion, here is a shot of what Hoser was talking about with the needle bearings internal to the main drive gear failing... dramatically. You normally get at these bearings the hard way, all the way through the other end of the cases, pull the primary, pull the tranny, and look in there. That being said, you can also just pull the sprocket cover, and look in the center of the shaft the sprocket is on, and that is the other end of that main drive gear assembly. The only thing between you and those needle bearings is a thin cheap seal, though I don't know if it would be possible to get that seal out or back in with the transmission still installed, and I doubt the bearings could be replaced without removing the tranny. Though you could probably clean and repack them if you are willing to do a tranny fluid change when you are done. And maybe this is something that should be added to our 5000 mile maintenance interval if it is easy to get that seal out from the right side. Pull the sprocket cover, pull the seal, flush bearing with wd/40 or similar light solvent, repack with grease, install new seal, change primary fluid. Just like checking the oil pump drive gear once every 3rd oil change or so. My seal was a mess inside, but looked like it was doing it's job. I don't think the water that got in here was a result of a leaking seal. I think Hoser is right about moisture accumulating in here without any oil to flush it out. I probably had a hint that this was going on way back when my primary tensioner failed. I heard some general crunchyness coming from this area, but it would come and go, and was very subtle. Not enough to motivate me to completely pull the tranny, though if I had I probably would have saved myself $114 for a new final drive gear. I am assuming my current one is shot based on the condition of the bearing below, but I won't know for sure until I pull it and check it. The needle bearing rollers are all worn, some up to half way through. They (in combination with the Mobil1 gear oil I run) were probably operating as a simple plain bearing. The shaft shows some pitting, but no scoring and is in remarkably good shape given the condition of what is left of the bearing. The final drive gear assembly may be fine as well... once the needle bearings stopped rolling they may have taken all of the damage... but I am not hopeful (and indeed already ordered the replacement). Anyway. Here is the shot. Gives new meaning to "walk towards the light!"... You are looking right through the shaft that your front belt pulley bolts onto.  Bill | ||
| Henrik |
Ouch ... Henrik | ||
| Jim_witt |
Great picture! | ||
| Sportyeric |
I did a tranny transplant last year. To get the final drive out I was persuaded to take it in to the dealership. I have a very good relationship with the staff there, who all appreciate that I (a) have little money, and (b) like to do as much as possible myself. The main mechanic said that there is a possibility of cracked cases while trying to extract the thing. Mine put up a hell of a fight, apparently, even with an enormous amount of heat. I was amazed that they would even take on the risk for the little bit of income. (I assume that by agreeing to do it, they would be liable for breakage if the case were to fail.) I watched them working for five minutes or so but couldn't stand the tension. It took them at least half an hour, maybe twice that. I don't exactly remember, but they charged me their initial quote rather than the time it actually took. (Always bring your mechanic doughnuts or home brewed beer, depending.) | ||
| Reepicheep |
Umm... somebody post something here to make me feel better  Got a much better chunk of steel (which Home Depot gouged me $12 for), and an angle grinder and metal cutting blade (which I wanted an excuse to buy anyway), and a much thicker threaded rod and associated washers. I will make a more serious effort to build up a better fitted tool, and maybe rig it to bolt into the tranny trapdoor bolts to increase the rigidity of the whole mess, and try and make sure everything is lined up as well as is possible, and give it another attempt. I will add heat as well, but make sure it is being applied only to the case and not to the bearing. Maybe I will even ice down the bearing as I heat up the case. Everyone so inclined, say a little prayer for me. I will be profoundly depressed if I crack a case over this. Had I known what I was getting into, I might have just tried to get that mess of old bearing out in place, and pressed in a new bearing in place. All I would have been risking is the countershaft and the final drive gear, but both of those are already worn and are pretty expensive... if they failed again I would be no worse off. edited by reepicheep on July 23, 2003 | ||
| Hoser |
Bill: SEE SERVICE MANUAL , I advised against doing this without the proper equipment , cracked crankcases may result from improper removal / installation . I don't mean to be rude but .... you have been warned !!! 5th gear is removed using a stepped driver plate which is pulled inward with a long 1/2" bolt , it passes through a plate which locates ( with pins ) to the face where the transmission door is bolted . Once you are comfortable with this setup and it is aligned , the gear should pull in to the case with a little effort ( some times they are a slut ). Located beneath the transmission output seal is a snap ring , it retains the ball bearing in the right crankcase , it too should offer little resistance , and is removed from the right side , do not try to drive it into the transmission , the casting has a lip which will then break off causing anger , embarassment and frustration. See manual for installation. The main drive gear will probably not need to be replaced , the bearings are pressed out and the new ones pressed in WITH THE CORRECT TOOL , the service manual I have sitting in front of me has a nice cross sectional view of the main drive gear , the position and depth of the needle bearings , it also shows the tools in use , a clever person could improvise these tools to get the job done but great care must be taken either way way you go Kent Moore or Afro American Engineered. I advise you to measure the mainshft where the needle bearings run and compare the measurement with a new shaft ( I don't have that number ), if it's worn badly or out of round the new bearings won't last long ! Please be careful |
