Ironhead about the trans...

[doodah man]

alright transmission experts, i have finally come up with the dough to get it fixed so this will be the first of many questions. last rode the bike in june when i went down to meet wooley and friends, kick start began to engage less and less, but i limped it home and found out someone in this bikes past made the dreaded and unforgiveable roller bearing/washer/retainer mistake . so my first Q -

in my studying the backlog of this site i have noticed many people who have replaced their main shaft race and kept the original trap door, did not have the two line honed; just a little finishing up and with a brake hone, no less. is this ok or is it standard practice to line hone no matter what. obviously it's a good idea, but is it completely necessary?

i plan on doing the all andrews gears/shafts - with that in mind, do i just get the standard sized race (and obviously an assortment of roller bearing sizes to fit)? are the over sized races for using the old/original main shaft to "soak up" the size difference from wear?

shift forks - mine had andrews clutch and counter drive gears, the rest were hodgepodge mixture and my shift forks were not standard size. now that i'm starting fresh, would standard size forks be the correct thing to begin with? or does the "probable error" originate with the trap door and necessitate using the same over/under sized forks - they're both badly worn and cannot be reused.

that's all i can think of to ask at 6:30 in the morning, but keep watching this one, i'm sure to have more crazy questions. and thanks for your input,insight, and experience.

[ryder rick]

You won't know about the shift forks until you assemble the trans and get it shimmed. No way to predict that.

[fdny37]

I have to say if you can get your race line honed then you should do that. However, when building my '68 CH from parts off of ebay I purchased a complete used trans that I just stuck in the hole. Being these bikes are old and back in the day when they where built the tolerance's where pretty sloppy I don't think it will hurt you much if you don't have it line honed. I just kept checking for any binding or tightness. You do know those rollers on the end of the mainshaft come in different over sizes.

[Ferrous Head]

I replaced the mainshaft race with a "stock" race and stock size rollers when I put the close ratio box into my race bike. When that gearbox "died" I just replaced it with a "stock" box I bought off e-pray and it went in perfectly and works well. (Better than the close ratio trock/Andrews setup.
Bolt the door in with just the clutch gear and mainshaft in. Install the rollers as if you were finishing the job completely.
If it spins OK, no drag then I'd say you can run it without further drama.

[doodah man]

ryder rick, so what you're saying is to hold off on getting any forks until later, almost last in the trans assembly? i kind-of understand that the forks individually space out ms 2nd and cs 3rd gears and the pawl carrier support can be shimmed away from the trap door, which will also affect the spacing of the forks and perspective gears. wow, that's a lot to wrap my mind around! can you tell i've never done a trans before!? i guess i'm confused on how to go about determining the needed fork offset, fsm is vague to me on this point.

f.d. the guy i spoke with about line honing wants me to pull the engine and i'd really rather not, if i can avoid it; and here we have two more accounts of no line honing and good results, hmm - we'll see. i was/am aware of the different size roller bearings and a pm from dr. dick shed some light (and a few tricks, thanks doc!) on what you and ferrous head have said about fitting roller bearings and making sure things roll smoothly, that part seems pretty straight forward to me now.

so the next question - how do you guys deal with getting the main shaft 3rd gear retaining ring in place? i had a helluva-time getting that damned thing off - bent the living shit out of it! i do not posses the obsolete and elusive 96396-52 retaining ring sleeve; so how do you accomplish installing that ring. tried a search for it here and came up with nothing, pages and pages of everything except for that!
thanks for the responses so far, keep 'm coming...

[doodah man]

...what's a thread without at least a little eye candy!?

you can see the heat discoloration and how badly the race is torn up.

fried! you can almost see where the retaining ring grove dissapears. and i know i need an expansion plug for that shift shaft hole. not to mention a good cleaning!

cs low gear is highly representative of how the rest of the gears look

this is the good fork, wtf!?!

main shaft roller bearing race contact area galled to hell and back.
i have a few more carnage pics, but it's late so i'll save them for another time.

[Ferrous Head]

These ARE good gearboxes, but like all of them, loose a 10 cent retaining ring and it all goes down the chute.
I don't think ANYONE has the retaining ring spreader. But you can get them on easily enough with just a thin screwdriver. They will take a certain amount of bending, twisting, just go carefully. Buy a couple and if you DO bend/twist one too far just toss it. You'll find it's not as hard as getting them off. Which is OK as I try to never re-use any small cheap parts like these.

If your shafts, gears, pawl carrier, trap door and bearing are all reasonably good items you won't need + or - shift forks or shims under the pawl carrier..

[billeuze]

yeh, you need the tranny assembled to determine if you need + or - forks and/or shims. Once it's assembled on the bench it's not too hard to measure and figure out what's needed. But yes it can be hard to get on'es mind around the description if you don't have your tranny there in front of you

But you have to have it assembled with forks of some sort to start with. Yours... I don't know how accurate that would be to know what you need if assembled with those in place.

As far as I know, line honing is mostly important when you get a new trap door. I agree with ferrous head above: bolt it up with just the mainshaft and see how it spins. If good, no need to line bore.

Hmm, I never had any problems with retainer rings, maybe I just got lucky.

[DR DICK]

this is what i use for 3rd gear ring.



those dots are drill points i made to help hold certain ret rings. i found they are only a small help



if you think the 3rd gear ring is hard to deal with, wait till its big brother needs to be installed. the one in the right side case race for the 23 rollers!

personally i do the fork spacing 1st, then shim for end play.
i do that because on the counter shaft there are shims that go on both sides of cshaft low gear (17t).
the shims (2 shims on 73> type gear, one on 72< speedo type gear) on left (shaft) side of 17t gear will affect fork spaceing. so you can use them to your advantage with forks.

when changeing them for fork spacing after cshaft has been shimmed in case will require you to reshim in case for end play. because you have changed the deck height of the c'shaft assm.

on mainshaft, shims have no effect on fork setting. so this can be done in either order

[brassy63]

what size mainshaft race are you going for a stock, 3 thou or 5 thou over, and the needle roller sizes are .156 of an inch stock and the next 2 sizes .160 and .164 thou, are you gonna get the needle rolllers lapped ? I would.