Hitchcocks Forum

Two questions as I've had an interesting two days. First off on Sunday my clutch cable went on a long run, but luckily I have a spare cables kit from our hosts. Thoroughly recommended!

My question about that is I replaced the clutch cable with a British made Nylon lined cable last August. That one went in January of this year and was replaced with another British made nylon lined cable and it went there on Sunday. That's a whole lot of clutch cables. This time I just pulled the barrel off the hand lever end of the cable.

Now my question is why so many cables? Having had to use my temporary replacement cable which uses much lighter gauge wire I was amazed at the difference. The clutch lever is as light as a feather so the stiffness is not to do with the clutch itself or the route that the cable is threaded, which has never been changed since I got the bike 10 years ago. I rang our hosts and they suggested that the setting down in the gear box was wrong.

I should explain how I do the adjustment. I basically screw in the adjuster in the gear box as much as I can to take all the slack out of the cable. So the in-cable adjuster, which sits about the petrol tap is totally closed so I have the full adjustment to play with there. As things stretch out a bit at the start of the cables life I find that it becomes difficult to get the gear box out of first gear and into neutral. That's my sign that I have to do a bit of adjustment mid cable to take up some slack. As long as I'm able to easily get into neutral when stationary I'm happy. So what am I doing wrong.

My second problem is that I took the bike for it's MOT on Monday and on the way to the test center the kick start return spring broke. That's an easy fix but when I took the gear box cover off some water and gear oil ended up on the street. So my seal is gone in the kickstart shaft, I assume. I've got the replacement I now have to look at how it goes in.

Any pointers gratefully received.

JOhn

Hi, what model of RE is this? 4 or 5 speed gearbox?

Sorry my paragraphs didn't come out in that last message.


And sorry about not mentioning model. It's a 2003 Indian 500CC Bullet 4 speed kickstarter. Things have got a little worse since my last message. I was pulling the gear box covers off the gear box to replace the seal and I found that the "Tab Washer" that secures the main shaft nut has lost it's inward pointing tab. In addition there's two chunks out of the main shaft either side of the grove in the shaft.


Don't know if I should now replace the main shaft. That's probably a big job and the gear box is one of the few things that I've never messed with. First time for everything maybe.

Ordered up the main shaft and the tab washer from the gearbox and hopefully have a go at it this weekend and be back on the road next week.


I'll now have to read up on the gear box work.

Right, as it happens I have just finished a marathon job rebuilding my gearbox to replace the bearings. It was my first time working on the inner part of the box, and I made a few mistakes which maybe you can avoid. The problem with my 'box turned out to be the drive side layshaft bush which was worn right through to the metal of the housing. I replaced the original cast iron bush with a bronze one, which was easy enough once the box was dismantled. I also replaced the main shaft bearings with sealed ones and replaced the kickstarter shaft with its bush.
Of course if all you are doing is replacing the mainshaft inner, that is much simpler. To do that, you need to take the primary chain cover off and remove the three bolts holding the clutch together, remove the nut and the mainshaft inner can be withdrawn from the other side. When you reassemble, get the clutch plates back in the right order and in the right orientation; see Technical notes! Also make sure the clutch adjuster is fully slack otherwise the springs will be too tight to allow the three bolts to thread.

Moving to the other side, the oil seal on the layshaft is provided by an O-ring on the kick starter spindle; if you replace the pawl using our hosts kit, you get a new one included. Remember to refit the thick spacer that goes between the spindle and the layshaft. Make sure the pawl is held closed when you refit the cover..

A major cock up I made was not understanding that the gear selector plate holds the flanges on the two moving cogs on the layshaft together, rather than separating them! This stage of reassembly is quite fiddly so persevere.
Other than this, you should be OK. You will know that the nut on the end of the mainshaft is left handed; it should be very tight, 45lbs. I think or two grunts if you don't have a torque wrench. If you had to disturb the ratchet mechanism to get the inner cover off, adjust it by putting the box in neutral and with the gear pedal temporarily fitted, check that by raising it up the box goes into first; the other gears should follow on from that. I gave the workings of the outer cover a spray of copper grease before putting the cover back.

Hope that helps, ask me any questions you have while its fresh in my mind!

Thanks a million John R!


you've answered a lot of my questions but I may ask some more at the weekend when I start this. I've been over your message a few times and through as much as I can get out of Pete Snidal's book and there's a huge gap in my understanding when it comes to how this comes to pieces. It's great that you say that I can simply pull the main shaft out of the middle but now that I'm here I feel I should bite the bullet and replace the bearing with a sealed bearing. And checkout that bushing on the lay shaft you mentioned.


From looking at parts book online and Pete Snidal it almost looks like the two shafts, main shaft and layshaft could come out fairly easily but there's a gear selector slap bang in the middle which I'm scratching my head over. I'll just have to look at it in real life, as opposed to a representation on a computer screen at the weekend.


Can I just ask did you replace both bearings on the main shaft with sealed bearings?


John W

Yes, replaced both of them. Not too difficult; heat the housings with rags soaked in boiling water, after having put the bearings in the freezer for a while and knock them in with a wooden drift.
If you look back over this board, you will see some advice i got while I was doing the job.
Some say you should remove the inner-facing seals rom the new bearings. On balance, I didn't.

Hi, With regard to the cables breaking, If you have inadvertedly oiled nylon cables they will slowly seize up as the nylon expands. vince

forgot to say that its normal to find the outer cover full of water, it seeps in down clutch cable and the little inspection covers, just cover everything inside with a liberal dose of grease to stop rusting. vince

Regarding the selector plate - the parts book calls it a selector fork- it is numbered 16 in the parts book online diagram. The upper semicircular cutout fits between the two rigidly joined cogs which form part 15.
The lower cutout holds together the two seperate cogs labeled 8 and 9, which have flanges on them for this purpose. The effect is that the selector fork can move these two pairs of cogs together on their respective shafts, but the ones on the layshaft - 8&9 - can turn independently of one another at different speeds.
The fiddly bit I referred to is getting all this back together with the pegs on the bottom of the fork located in the cutouts at the bottom of the gear operator, part 26.
It all makes sense when you see it. Eventually!