Enter the transmission
My trans worked fine, as far as I could tell. Some sloppy linkage issues that could be remedied from the outside, but since I still had some time on my hands I decided to give it a once over.
Cover off:
Looks ok to me so far, I guess.
What that cover covers up:
I really have no idea what all these shafts are yet, so before I figure it out I thought I’d better pull everything out of there and mix it around so I’d really have to think about it to get it back together.
I later discovered that I think this is the “clutch shaft” or maybe the “output shaft” or possibly “neither of those.” You’ve figured out I’m figuring this out as I go, right?
What else? Well this one is the shift drum, which is easy enough to spot and name. This picture notes the top of the drum and shows 2 shims that were found on the one end.
Pretty sure this is called something like the input shaft, or cluster thing maybe. This is really the only thing that may fall apart in your hands, really only the gears on the ends of it tend to slide off when you’re not looking so try and look when they fall off so you stand a chance of putting it back together the right way. Also shown is the dogs or sliding muffs.
Really, I did have some motivation to dive into the trans besides boredom. First, I figured on replacing those bearings since they’re about $50 for a round (save the needle bearing, left well enough alone on that one), second I heard the 4th gear bushing was prone to failure. Once again, Charlie called it again :
Charlie M. didn’t have a spare, so after calling around a few places – Mark Etheridge of Moto Guzzi Classics hooked me up with a new 4th gear complete with bushing for $50. Awesome.
So all that’s left is the intermediate shaft. Which is great because it’s all machined together so you can drop it and let it roll off the table and not have to worry about remembering how it went back together. You can also spot a little metal tray towards the top that is supposedly crucial to tranny lubrication.
Oh, but wait!
My intermediate shaft has a huge gnarly crack in it!
I have no idea what caused it, nor can I speculate. I can say for sure that Charlie Mullendore hooked me up with a spare at a very fair price.
I mentioned replacing the bearings, which for the most part is very straight forward. However there is one at the front (engine side) of the trans that requires a modified puller. Behind it is a special place that has a sort of nippleish protrusion that would crumple if a regular style bearing puller were used. The plate is unobtanium, so be careful. Charlie shipped me his modified puller, which is just a run of the mill blind hole collet that he had machined a recess in the center of to clear the nip of the plate.
