[MCCVIII]

Yesterday i was in the tattoo shop and was talking with my artist about motorcycles (has rebuilt some bikes in his time) and where my rebuild was @ this point.

I told him that I had just replaced all of my case bearings (went well), buthad a bummer of a day on thursday installing the transmission. i got the transmission and gear shift mechanism in, cases mated up and torqued down, but when i was running through the gears, 4th gear acts like a neutral. that's the main problem. i think i must have flipped one of the gears before installing. i wish i would have shot a short video or something. but 1-n-2-3- -5-6 all work well. the transmission sometimes catch/lock up when im turning the main shaft by hand, but i chalk that up to the gears turning without the benefit of an oil bath, and on a non-level angle. a little bump or shake gets them spinning free again.

so i was telling him about this, and he gave me the scare story about how i should really take the transmission to somebody who is an expert in the arena. he was talking about how you need to shim the transmission out properly before installation, and neither the honda manual or the clymer manual have any mention of "shimming" the transmission at all. so i'm confused and his scare tactics keep playing in my head ("dude if you lock up that back wheel @ 65mph, you're ******* dead!!")

 

[mattyo]

I've never heard anything about shimming the tranny either. That's not saying much because I've only rebuilt one engine and tranny in my life so far. But, I did not shim anything after replacing my crank bearings and the tranny works fine. But it is kinda weird that your 4th doesn't work. I would look into that and try to get that resolved.

If the rear wheel locks up going 65, I think you'd be fine if you pulled in the clutch right away. Well unless you're going around a corner, that would suck. But there's so much forward momentum and these bikes are pretty front heavy that I don't think it would fish-tail much. I've been doing 45-50 and down-shiftted 2 gears because of a red light or someone in front of me doing something stupid and I need to brake fast. Pop the clutch and the rear wheel locks up. Bike doesn't fish tail at all, at least not the few times it's happened to me. But I do pull in the clutch right after the fact. If you didn't pull in the clutch the bike might start fish tailing. I don't know. But the point of that divergent story was to say the rear wheel locking up is not that scary.