OK, I got confused. It has been 12 years since I last had Mr.H's engine out and in the meantime I've had Eccles' engine out 7 or 8 times so its not surprising that I would get the differences mixed up. When I take Eccles' engine out and I'm planning to do a bunch of cleanup before I put it back I grab the u-joint and pull the driveshaft out so I can put it where it will stay clean. So, naturally, when I removed Mr.H's engine I tried to do the same thing. When It didn't come out I remembered that it had a removable joint on the other end that was held on by a circlip so I pushed it back in. And, of course, tried turning it to make sure the splines had engaged. But no matter how hard I pushed or how much I turned the shaft or the wheel it wouldn't engage so I left it for later and moved on to cleaning the frame, figuring I'd try again before I put the new engine in.Sidecar Bob wrote:I also have to see if I can figure out how to get the driveshaft to re-engage with the final drive without having to remove the rear wheel and FD before I can start installing the engine....
I sat down beside it yesterday and pushed the shaft rearward while rotating the wheel, hoping that would lift the fallen end of the shaft enough that it could slide onto the splines on the final drive. After a while I gave up and proceeded to to remove the wheel & FD. When I got them out I noticed that the end of the shaft (or actually the joint) was about where it would have to be if it was engaged with the FD's splines. What the heck? So I put the drive back on the swingarm and tried again, this time being careful to make sure that the end of the shaft was around the end of the FD and tried to turn the shaft only to find that it was not making the splines that engage the wheel turn. As you can imagine, I was beginning to think the worst as I removed the FD again but no, when I turned the input the output did tun and when U turned the u-joint the joint on the other end of the shaft turned and in both cases if I tried to stop one end I felt resistance at the other.
After a bit more fiddling I realized that if you push the driveshaft all the way back it disengages from the FD but if you pull it forward to where it would be if attached to the engine it is solidly engaged. So I had spent all the work time I had for the day and removed the wheel & FD all for nothing.
Well, in my best lemonade making style I decided it would be easier to clean up the caliper and replace the pads without the wheel in the way. And it wouldn't hurt to clean everything out so it can go back together with fresh grease and I might as well replace the o-ring on the hub since I now keep suitable o-rings in stock (both bikes take the same size and a lot of 10 was cheap in eBay)
BTW: I had one of those ancient o-rings break on Eccles a few years ago, dirt got into the grease I had to find a new spline flange.
And I had a hard time making myself move in the heat (now that the sun has gone down it has "cooled" to 30c) so that's all I got done today. I'll put the wheel & FD back on tomorrow...