Transmission part 2
I felt okay about tackling re-shimming my transmission. A little hesitant, but I figured I couldn’t really get myself into a situation I couldn’t get out of, and figured what the hell. Right?
Really, the only part that needs to be shimmed is the shift drum. You install the drum by itself, stick you finger in through the bell housing side and see if you can wiggle the drum fore and aft. I could. At that point it’s just a matter of installing shims (fancy name for washers with measured thicknesses) until you get rid of the slop. Mine required 1 more .6mm shim. You don’t know where to put it at first, so allsya do is guess and check for the best shift feel. Not rocket science people.
The real bastard of the trans work is getting the shims to stay put while your trying to install the drum. The shims at the top (rear of the trans – I say top because I had the trans vertical this whole time and the back of the trans was facing up) are not a problem. The bottom shims are a huge pain though, since if there off the shaft that runs through the drum won’t find it’s home – it’ll be obstructed. I used grease to hold the shims in place, but even still it took quite a careful hand.
The whole bit needs to be installed in 3rd gear. The nature of the shift drum makes is such that the top dog is in a flat part of it’s travel, so you have a little leeway where it goes. The bottom dog however needs to be in a very particular position. What I did was take a long piece of solder, wrapped it under the dog and tied the solder around whatever to hold the bottom dog where it needed to be. This helped a lot. It allowed me to be able to slip the bottom dog into the shift drum without having to hold it at the correct height. Then the top dog was slipped into the shift drum, and then the shaft anchored home.
I also had Charlie Mullendore machine my pre-selector shaft to accept an o-ring and installed a beefier 5 speed return spring. New gaskets and seals and of course Greg Stainless’s hardware to finish up the job.
I don’t know if this is true about others, but my workbench seems to be a reflection of my life. The busier I am, the more cluttered the bench gets. It’s probably because I have less time to organize, but I like to think it could be some deeper metaphor.
raj and his guzzi. 