Wednesday, May 12, 2010 [19326 miles]
Engine removal time
Today the engine will come out of the frame. That means I’ll first need to remove the cover, generator, and magneto in the front and disconnect the transmission from the driveshaft in the rear before removing the transmission.
Front cover off
Vibration damper off
Rotor off, wires disconnected
Generator off
More disconnects
Bag body off
Mag rotor pulled
Rotor stored in magneto body
Generator armature removed
Nothing hard about the steps needed to remove parts from the front of the engine. I put the bike in gear and stepped on the rear brake to stop the engine from turning when removing the damper/generator armature bolt and the advance/magneto rotor bolt. Not much force was needed to pop the armature and magneto rotor off using the puller bolt.
Top motor mount
Motor mount hardware off
I’m going to tilt the engine to remove the transmission. The top motor mount has to come off to do that. This was the second hardest task of the day. There isn’t much wiggle room to get the bracket off the engine.
Speedo and tranny output
Kept the water out
Neutral light wiring
Ground strap
Oil catcher
Drive shaft boot
I disconnected the speedo cable, the neutral light, and the ground strap from the transmission. Before loosening the clamp and folding back the drive shaft boot I got some tin foil to direct the few ounces of oil that live in the boot toward my catch pan. Once the catcher was in place I folded the boot and loosened the drive shaft bolts. Stepping on the brake kept the drive shaft from rotating.
Rear motor mount
Transmission removed
Leaky input seal
A scissor jack under the oil pan took the load off of the rear mounting bolt, allowing me to remove it. A few more turns of the scisor jack raised the rear of the engine enough to get the transmission out. Oh, look at that. Oil on the shelf. Hmmm, smells like gear oil. Ands what do you know, the tranmission input seal seems to be leaking.
Draining engine oil
Ooops. I never drained the engine oil. I put the rear engine mount back and removed the scissor jack to make room for a catch bucket. That oil is only a few hundred miles old. I found some grit on the bottom of the catch bucket when pouring it into the recycle container.
Engine removed
Waiting for work space
Once the oil was removed I put the drain plug back so I
wouldn’t misplace it and got the scissor jack back under the engine.
Both engine mounts were removed and I pulled the engine out of the right
side of the bike. I thought the petcock might get in the way if I tried
removing it from the left side.
That’s all for today. Now I need to make myself some work space before opening up the engine. That likely means throwing away some stuff which is sometimes the hardest part of any job.