Leave Cali day 33

I put a new main bearing race in the transmission of my 1977 Sportster.

Above is a picture of the bike when I was done. It was a long job. The main transmission race, where the sprocket goes to the rear chain, was belled out from my using a brake hone to clean it up years ago. That slop meant the countershaft needle bearing just crumbled into pieces. So before I moved to Florida, I had to get it back together. I was going to ship the bikes to Florida in early July.

Transmission work is the biggest job on an Iron Sportster, You have to take the right side apart to get the chain sprocket off. You have to take apart the left side to get the primary cover off and the tranny out. This is just a few pictures of 157. I will be posting the full job over on my Sportster site. The big deal is I had finally bought the main race honing tool for several hundred bucks, to fix it right.

I made up a tool to press out the old mainshaft bearing race. Here I pull in the new race, I got it from Jim's Machining, nice stuff made in USA. The primary is set aside ready to get replaced. I should have cleaned it all, but was in a hurry.

The shop was a mess, I had set some stuff out for the metal scavengers. The tranny apart. The tranny together. I had to find another countershaft for it, as well as any other problems I found..

Before I put it in, I do the critical line-honing operation of the race I just pressed in. You put the tool in the trap door and when you hone the bearing race, it will be true. I button up the trap door once the tranny is put into the case. I use a drop of blue Loctite.

The kickstarter goes in. Here I am bending over the tab on the lock-washer. The primary goes on. I had cut the starter pocket out of the case, and use an old dry clutch setup, run wet, with Barnett plates and stiffer Barnett springs.

I had rigged up a lever to apply the clutch. I adjust the primary chain. Here is the bike ready to go down on the ground, where I can push it into the garage. I will finish the last few things tomorrow, but the bulk of the huge job is done.

Leave Cali day 33

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