This is the twelfth part (check out part eleven here) in our extremely popular video series in which Todd Muller, Head Motorcycle Tech here at Lowbrow Customs, disassembles a unit 650 c.c. Triumph motorcycle engine and rebuilds it. In this installment Todd gives you a step by step guide on how to rebuild your Triumph 650 primary drive. He shows how everything works and what to look for before reassembly. Todd shows what to look for in your clutch basket, clutch center and how to install everything in your primary case. You can check out the Triumph 650 Motorcycle Engine Disassembly & Rebuild - Part 13 to continue following along!
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You can read a full transcription of this video below:
Hey, guys. Welcome back. Part 12, Triumph 650 Engine Rebuild. Today, we're going to tackle the primary drive. Pretty excited about that? We're really getting close to the end here.
Let's go ahead and get started on the primary drive. I've got all my components laid out here, inspected all the parts. Everything's ready to go back together. We'll show you a couple of tips here on what to look for, for wear before we start assembling. If you find some worn parts in there, it's always a good idea to replace them. We're going to do this once and we're going to do it right. We're not going put our clutch together with worn-out clutch plates and worn clutch basket, old chain, primary shoe, adjuster shoe is going to be replaced.
We're trying to renew this and make it as good as we possibly can with what we have here. We do have the majority of the parts needed for this job on the website. We've got chains, clutch plates, we've got this basket, we've got the center, we've got the gaskets, the seals, all the good stuff you might need to do this job. Let's go ahead. The first thing we're going to look at is the clutch basket. Since this one's in good shape or it's usable, it's not in perfect condition.
I'll grab a worn one and we'll show you what to look for on that. Here's one out of the reject pile. What we're looking for on here is three things. We're looking at the condition of the teeth to see if any are really worn down. We're looking at where these bearings ride. This is a race in here. Most importantly, we're looking at where the clutch plates ride in these grooves, the friction plates. As you can see on this one, if you take a look at this, you can see some serious indentations because what's happening is every time you're hitting the clutch, the pressure plate comes out and releases and then the plates are banging against this slot and so they get this very common wear.
If yours looks like this, you probably want to consider a new one. This is your clutch center where your springs go, and you can have the same problem with these. These don't generally wear as quickly as that, but this one's pretty darn wore out. I'll show you the one we're going to use in a sec here. You notice those groovings, same effect that was on the basket I just showed you.
Basically, what you want is the steel plates slide up and down on those grooves. What you want is you want those to slide nicely. They have to be able to move freely, and if they're hitting those boogered up edges, it might not release as well as it could, as if you had a better part in there. Now, there's one other interesting fact about this that you might not know and you're going to find out in a sec here. If you were to remove these three screws, and I have those removed on that part, we'll show you, you're going to find some rubber inside here. Well, what this does is it acts, like on a Harley Davidson, they have a big spring on the front.
As you're shifting gears and using the clutch, it's called a compensator sprocket and it basically absorbs some of the shock. Basically, that's what this part does inside here, and we'll show you. This one's actually from a pre-unit, it has four-inch grooves instead of three. I've got this one dissembled so you can see that there's a big spider gear in there. I guess you could call it that. Then on this one, there'd be a rubber on each side of that. It absorbs the shock. If you find that yours looks-- If you take this cover off, which you do need the screwdriver.
Let's see here. That everyone yelled at me several videos ago. I did actually find my impact screwdriver, gang. Yes, I do own one and yes, I did use it to remove the cover off of that, okay? That's enough of that. You're going to use that impact screwdriver to remove these screws and pop this cover off and you're going to look inside it. This is what it's going to look like. This is once again, pre-unit has more rubbers than unit four screws, three screws basically, pretty much the same part. You'll notice that a pre-unit has a four spring pressure plate, where a unit has a three spring pressure plate.
You're going to see these rubber in here. You want to see, are they still soft or are they falling apart? I've determined that this one's still serviceable. All right, remember back when we talked about the breather systems on the crankcase for these? This is an early one, it has the pipe underneath there. The late one will have the vent back here. Early motor, you must install this seal. That will seal the crankcase from the primary because it's breathing out the bottom here.
Later one, no seal required because they'll be three little holes here where it equalizes the pressure from the crankcase to the primary and goes out the vent on the back.
Technically, it's much easier to put this seal in before you put the crankshaft in. Since I forgot to do that, not a problem, we'll go ahead and get it installed now. Let's do that first. Interesting thing to note, the lip with the spring on this seal will be facing out when we're done like so because we're trying to seal the crankcase from the primary.
We're not trying to seal the primary to the crank. Multiple times I've taken engines apart and found this seal the other way around. I'm sure if you go to the Internet and look on the silly forums, you'll find a bunch of controversies over which way to put the seal in. Correct way is like this. Now you're wondering, how are we going to bang on the outside edge of that seal with this sticking out and this is the part that seals?
Would've been much easier to install it this way where we could tap on this edge. Well, what I've done sometimes in the past is a piece of PVC pipe tubing plastic for plumbing works well for installing seals as long as the edge is riding on the edge of this seal because we don't want to booger up the center of that. Right now, I've got it centered in the hole, I'm looking, I'm going to give it a push with my fingers. It doesn't feel like it wants to go in, but it looks even.
This morning when I was still over at Lowbrow at the shop, I was digging around my toolbox trying to find a piece, I had a piece of tubing there, PVC, it was the wrong diameter. In the meantime, I'm searching for something that I can bang on the outside of this that will let me get past the crank and here's what I came up with, cork seal driver. Just happened to be the right diameter. Now I've already started to push it in or I'd you show it. The outside edge of this coincides with the diameter of this. We're going to carefully tap that baby home.
Okay. I can see that it's going in the bottom more than the top, so we're going to give it a whack right here. She's going in. Looks like it's in on that side, but not on this side. Look at that. That looks pretty darn good. I'm going to give it one more tap just for good measure. There we go. That worked beautifully. Sometimes you have to improvise when trying to get some of these jobs done. Once again, if you put it in before you put the crank in, it's not a problem getting past the crankshaft. We got her done.
Okay, now the next thing we're going to do is we're going to put the seal in this cover, which will be installed right here. We have a seal in the center and we have a gasket that goes around the outside edge. We'll go ahead and put some silicone on here when we're ready. It's not a problem, it won't hurt anything in here if there's some silicone. Now, this seal and we also showed you, I believe, on the last video, about the two different covers that coincide with the end of the transmission gear.
We've got the correct seal, the correct size hole on this cover. We'll grab a seal driver and we'll go ahead and get this installed. Once again, this is going to be the same program as this one. Let's get her done. If you're unsure as to which way to put this seal, I know it's going to go this way with the spring facing out to seal this, to seal the primary. If you're unsure, consult your manual. There's a picture of it right there, oil ceiling gearbox sprocket, and you can plainly see that the spring is facing out like so.
All right, I'm going to flip this over and I'm going to put it in from this side with this little seal driver tool and a little hammer. Again, anytime you're installing a seal, try to get it as straight as you can before you start hitting it. If it goes cattywampus, you'll just fix it. [banging] All right, she's down pretty far on that side but not this side so what I like to do now is I like to beat on just the driver portion of the tool, not the center because then that darn thing doesn't want to fit in there. She's down all the way there but up just a little there so just hit just the side that needs to go in.
[banging]
There we go. Looks pretty good. Seal installed. The spring facing this way. Okay, we're ready to put some silicone on there. I like to use new screws on these. If you remember, I chisel them off because I couldn't find my darn impact hammer but even if I would've been able to find it, these are still a bear to get out of there. I just get some new ones
and I'm also going to put a dab of blue Loctite on the new screws.
I like to put a little bit of silicone in between the screw holes, I don't want to get it on the screw holes and then what I do next is I just put a little bit on this edge because if you remember when we took that cover off, she was a pretty tight and so basically we're just trying doing this so we can keep the fluid that's in the primary, in the primary and not have it coming out in between the cover here.
A little bead around there. Now when you go to put this on there you want to try to get those darn holes perfect because it's hard to turn this once it's on there and the other thing I'm going to do is I'm just going to put a little dab of oil on the seal to help it slide over that end of the fourth gear that's sticking out there, where the main drive sprocket is, a little bit of oil on there. Stick our gasket on.
That silicone is helping that stick and stay there. It's not like you got to have a glob of silicone on there to get it to work. Sometimes you can't move that thing like I just did but there's the cover on, seal looks good. Now, we'll put a bit little dab of blue Loctite on these screws because we don't want them to come out. Everything's nice and dry and clean here, Loctite should work fine.
Now that we've got all six screws in, we'll go ahead and tighten them down and you may have noticed, this may be the first time I've used any Loctite on this entire motor job. Most things have lock tabs or lock nuts and I sure didn't want to put red on here because once again, we've got a steel fastener going into an aluminum threaded hole and they don't need to be tight until the cows come home. Just enough to seal her up.
All right we need to reinstall this little tube here and what that does is these stater wires go through that tube to exit on the backside of the engine. I don't normally put any sealer or anything on there. I think it'll be fine, nice and tight. Now, we're going to put the primary shoe, adjuster shoe on next and in order to do that, we're going to have to take the adjuster shoe, this is where you would access to tighten your chain is this plug bolt, whatever you want to call it right here. Notice I've got a nice big, thick, fat fiber washer on there to keep it from leaking.
We're going to unthread the adjuster, this is the part where you'd put your tool, your official Lowbrow tool. Here's a tool that we made that you can stick in that hole and turn it with a wrench and then it rides on this groove here like so. When you're tightening this, that little concave thing is pushing against this and it bows this up and puts tension on the chain. You'll see when we get there. Anyway, we got that off of there and then on the front of this, this is the original part, and you want to double-check your threads on here, are all in good shape.
We got a couple that are a little weirded out but-- This is a brand new part because the one that was on here was completely trashed. Basically, if you're putting a new shoe on, you're going to slide this pin that I've already put in here with a hole in it in this end, and then you're going to put this little dealio here, is going to slide through that and then this is going to slide onto this little fork. Notice, how there's a flat on this and that flat is going to go in that fork like so, so that this ends up right there but going through the middle of this.
Once again, when you're putting your new shoe on, make sure that you've got the shoe material to the inside like this one is because see how it doesn't go all the way across. Then we're going to orientate this so the flat is facing there, we're going to slide this on there, that flatlined up and just give it a little shove. When everything's clean like this, it goes right on. Look at that, piece of cake. Now you're going to take this chinga, stick it through the hole, use your tool and get it engaged in the slot which sometimes that can be a booger, a bear, come on here.
Here, let's shove it. She's already started, we'll shove this back out and get it started now because it's a-- There we go. Then I'm just going to run that adjuster piece to take up the slack here. I don't want to start turning it on the shoe now, it's contacting that and it's still flat. You see this thing's kind of springy. You'll see after we put the chain on, we'll use that to tension the chain.
Now, we're ready to prepare the other parts to go on. Well, you have to put the basket, the front sprocket, chain, clutch, all this on in one motion, because if you put the front on or you put the back on first, you can't get the chain on. Let's go ahead and we'll do this next. What this is, is there's a whole bunch of loose roller bearings here. There should be 20 of them there.
We're just going to grab a dab of grease, and we're going to grease this baby up, right here, where the bearings ride. Don't need to overdo it. Just need enough on there to get those bearings to stick to this part, because you'll see why in a sec here. Okay, that should work. Now you're just going to lay these little barrel bearings right on there like so, one after another. You'll see on this part, I didn't show you, but there's kind of a race built into it where this ride. This is what lets your clutch spin around on there.
There we go. Now we'll just give a quick count of those, just to be sure. Probably should have counted them before we put them on there, but it's not a big deal. We'll start at this hole, and we'll go 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20. Make sure all 20 are on there, and if you want to you can put a little dab of grease on this, and this is the race that those ride on. You can see it's pressed into this basket so just another little dab of grease, won't hurt anything.
Make sure your thrust washer is on there like so. That rides against the back of this. Some of these have a shiny side and a side that looks similar to this one in color. This one did not. It has the same on both sides. Either way around, if yours is shiny, put the gold-colored side facing this like so. Look at her go. Look at that. Woo. Now, I really always like to use a new chain and a new adjuster. Like I said, we're rebuilding this motor. I don't know how old that chain is or how many miles it has on it. I'll tell you a real quick story while I'm putting this on here.
Now, one time a few years ago, I put one together. A few years ago, I was doing the same job and trying to be cheap, reused the shoe and the chain. When I put it all together and I had everything all tightened up and ready to rock, and when I went to adjust the chain, this thing looked like this. It was bowed up so far in the middle that I knew darn well the chain was worn out so then I had to take it all back apart, and I replaced the shoe and the chain, and when I tightened this, just a couple of turns, and this barely moved up about that much and the chain was tensioned. Ever since then, it gets a new chain and a new shoe.
All right, so I'm just putting the cover back on this with the three screws. If you're curious as to how to change those rubbers, basically you're going to separate it like the other part I showed you. Take it apart. You're going to take both sides off. There's screws on both sides of this. Now you're going to remove the old scrutty rubbers, which generally come out pretty easy when they're worn out. Then what I found is a good, easy way to do this job, basically, you have to turn that spider gear in there to drop a rubber in. You get the first three in and then it's too far this way to get the other ones in.
You may notice on my lock plate tool that we'll use in a few minutes to torque the center nut, I've drilled a couple of holes, and I have a piece of strap steel that I can bolt to this, and then I can put this, put the center in the vise, and use this to turn it to drop the rubbers in. I believe there is a really good YouTube video on that. It wasn't done by me, it was done by someone else, but if you are really curious on how to change those, it's out there.
We're not going to go over that today. Just in case you were wondering, it is out there. Okay, I've got my three screws in. She's tight, she's all clean, she's inspected. Need to put these three studs in the backside of this before we put it on there because you can't put them on later. Notice how they have a flat. The flat rides up against that edge and keeps those from turning, and these are for your springs and your pressure plate adjusters.
What I do for this is I put all three in, and then put a little pressure on it with my fingers so that as I put it over that spline that this coincides with, these don't drop down and screw things up, where I have to take it back apart again. She's a tight one. She's a real tight one. [banging] There she goes. Should slide on that pretty easy. If it doesn't, don't worry about it. It'll be all right. Just make sure it's bottomed out and that these aren't jammed up at the bottom.
Now we're ready to put this big mast on there, but first, we got to have a key for the main shaft. There's a keyway on the main shaft, and technically speaking the key is not really holding this to keep this turning. It's the taper on this shaft going to the taper on this center part, is what keeps it together. This just helps it along. We're going to put our key on there. Make sure she's down in the groove. Make sure she's a groovy key and she's sticking up one side like these keys like to do.
There, now she's down. Perfect. Now, it'll center itself when that goes on. Notice I've also got this keyway facing up because it'll make it easier when I get to the other part here that we're going to do. Review real quick, got everything in there that we need to have in before we put that on. Notice how I've got my keyway facing straight up for when I lift this all up to put it on. Another thing that doesn't hurt, we'll pop this off real quick, and generally, if this is the part that came off this crank, it should be a nice fit.
That's a pretty nice fit. It's not loose, but it's not tight. Sometimes like we saw, we did have to-- Remember, we pulled this off of there. It was stuck on there. Right now, we don't want to hammer it home if we don't have to. We know that that's going to slide on that spline, nice and easily. We've got our key on. We've got that. Now we're ready to pick this whole thing up and slide it all on.
The biggest part about doing this next part is making sure that that key is in that groove. Sometimes, same thing with the camsa, can push the key up and out of there, and that's not what we want. We've got that centered. Let's give her a whirl. Got to get the chain up past. Then you got to get this spline started. There she goes. Then you can generally slide that on to the key and slide that home into our seal. I can see that that's on the key because the main shaft is turning the same time with this part.
You're going to find two different arrangements on this nut that goes on here. Early ones will have a lock tab where you slide the lock tab on first, you put your nut on, and then you reach in there with a screwdriver, and you bend the tab over. Later ones had this special locking washer. Well, technically, I probably should be using a new locking washer, but I am going to use some Red Loctite. This big, thick, flat washer is going to go on first. That's going to disperse the load. Now I'm going to use the Lowbrow Custom's Barbie Stairs.
The Lowbrow Customs lock to lock these together to torque this nut. We've got our socket handy for that. There's that. Let's grab our torque wrench and some red Loctite. Just for the heck of it, we'll refer to the book, check our torque spec. All right. I have consulted with my 1967 torque specs and it says the clutch center nut is 50 foot-pounds. Well, and just for the heck of it, that one would have had a lock tab, I got a later year model book and it says the same darn thing. Clutch center nut, 50 pounds.
Irregardless of whether you have the lock tab or the special nut, it's still going to be 50 pounds. Let's get her torqued. Set our wrench up. Lock her down. There's 50 pounds. We got our flat washer on there. We're going to put some Loctite on her. We'll run it down with this first. All right. Look at that. I can't tighten that. It's turning and turning. Clutch locking plate tool. Just line up those grooves where the clutch plates would go, like so.
All right, so we're going to ahead and put the barbie stairs in here. That will keep the chain from turning while this keeps this from turning and we're ready to torque it. Regular thread, nut left-handed. No, still got a little ways to go to get to the end there. Let's run it down with a ratchet until we get all the way to the end and then torque it. There she is at the end now. Kind of hard to tighten it up with this giant wrench here. There she is, 50 foot-pounds. Badabing.
Right, I've often had customers question me on this little bit of wobble we got going on here. That's perfectly fine when this is-- Check this when you get it all together should spin nice and free. You're going to have that little bit of wobble, that's just the way it is. Once you get all the clutch plates in there and the pressure plate on, it'll be solid. Look at that, with our new chain, our shoe barely turned at all. Look at her. It's almost tensioned now. I haven't even adjusted it yet.
All right. Next thing I'd like to talk about is the clutch pushrod. You've got this big, long rod. Goes in the hole here. Look at her. Goes all the way to the other side of the engine to the clutch release. Here's one that's no bueno. If you adjust your clutch pressure plate, this center screw right here, that hardened tip of that, look how shiny that sucker is from pushing against the end of one of these things.
When we get to the clutch adjustment, you'll see why it's important to have some free play in your cable at the handlebar. Also, when we adjust this center screw, you're going to turn it down until it just starts to lift and then you're going to back it off. What that's doing is it's relieving the pressure so that this rod is not pushing against that adjuster really hard like that 24/7 or then it ends up looking like that, mushroomed.
Inspect your rod for the ends being mushroomed and you can also take it in your kitchen on your granite countertop if you got granite countertop, if you don't, maybe a piece of plate glass and you're going to roll it. Does it look like it's bent or does it look like it's straight? You don't want a bent pushrod that has mushroomed ends in there because you want your clutch to work as good as it can.
One other thing I like to do on these is put a little grease on her. I know, it's just going through a big, fat hole in the middle of that shaft but any way we can help things move along here. Look at that, oh yes. There she is, bam. This pushrod has been inspected. The ends aren't mushroomed and it is straight. All right. At this time, I think we'll go ahead and put the studs in the case for the stator. This one will face out. The hex will face out and that will go in and technically, it's got two different threads on there.
You can't put it on backwards. Oh, it's nice working with a clean crankcase where you're not forcing things together. I'm just going to temporarily put these back on here so they don't get lost in the shuffle and then we've got two long ones top and bottom. This one's got a little chain drag mark on it from a loose primary chain so we'll just go ahead and put that one back one the bottom. Oh, wait. Stop. Regroup. This is something else that you need to check to make sure they're straight.
If you get one of these that's bent, which is very common, it will be very difficult to install your stator when it comes to that portion of the program. Generally, the long ones you can side them and look and see if they're bent over or not. This one generally doesn't bend as easily as these do. Just give it a quick visual before you install it. I probably got some bent ones around here, I can show you. Once again, not uncommon to see that mark from-- If the chain's worn or loose, it can come in contact with that.
We're not so concerned about that. It's not going to prevent this stator stud from doing its job. Plenty tight enough, don't need to crank it down too hard, and the final one. Give it a visual. Look, that one's got the same drag mark on it. Not only will these support our stator, these two front ones will be sticking out the primary to put the final two nuts on with the sealing washers. Tight enough, very good. All right. The next thing we're going to do is we're going to go ahead and install the rotor for your electrical and we've got this long, square key that's going to go on this slot on the crankshaft. That's what will locate the rotor.
Wait. Wait a minute. We got to have this big, fat washer on there to space the rotor out first, I'm sorry. Then we're going to put the key in the groove. She's a tight one. Sometimes if you look at the profile, this one looks pretty darn square. If you look at the profile, you can see the marks on it from where it was installed before and you're going to run that all the way up to that washer and don't be alarmed that it's sticking off the end. That won't hurt a darn thing. She's having a hard time getting in the groove. She's not getting in the groove.
[tapping] There we go, there's our key for our rotor. Now, you may also notice that my stud is not in the hole, this one here. Not a problem, I think I actually talked about it. I did replace this. If yours comes off looking like this, it's not a problem. You can put it together like this or if you so desire, you can remove the stud from this nut and lock tight it in there. It really doesn't make much of a difference. It's just going to keep the rotor on there and that is going to get a lock tab, a bend over lock tab on there too after we get the rotor on.
Okay. We're ready to put clutch plates in but before we do so, I'll show now a worn-out drive plate, we'll compare it to a new one here. Notice how small the little teeth are on there where they ride in the basket. Look at that. Once again, that's from the clutch plate going like this when you hit the clutch, so we won't worry about that. Okay, we're going to start with the friction plate in first. Goes in first. Correct order and we'll go to a steel plate. Now, on these new steel plates that we have here, you'll notice that one side's very flat and one side is just slightly rounded. It's hard to see. You probably won't be able to see it but I always put the flat side in. That's going to go on the center.
Okay. So we have a friction plate, steel plate, then another friction. Basically, we're just going to put them all in alternating, and you should end up with a steel plate when you get to the end. Simple. No problem. Now, we've got our clutch pressure already in there with a little dab of grease on the end of it. Go ahead and install our pressure plate. I've also replaced these three springs. I believe we went over that earlier in the series but I'll go ahead and reiterate that one. When you take your old springs out, set them up on the workbench and compare the lengths. If one looks a little shorter or a little longer than the other, they're probably worn out. Pretty inexpensive to put new ones in.
Notice on the plate, on the pressure plate, we'll take on of these cups out, see there's a square flat and then on the cup, where the spring goes in, there's a little tiddy. Make sure when you're assembling that that tiddy winds up with that little cutout on there. I'm going to turn my adjustor out. It's probably good and then you're just going to put your pressure plate over your three studs with your cups down in the holes like so, insert your three springs and then we're going to get these started. You kind of got to push on the spring just a little bit. Don't forget, we checked all our threads on those three studs before we put the center in to make sure that these thread on there nicely.
Now, we have this official lowbrow customs tool and you'll see why it's made like this with a hole in the center in those two because when you get down towards the end, the stud's going to start sticking through the middle of that. This is designed to be used with a socket and a ratchet. Technically, until it gets to that point, you can use a screwdriver like so, but notice how it doesn't really fit in the slot very good, does it? We'll run them down a little bit with this. Now, we'll switch back to our tool.
I can just see the stud poking through on that one and that one and we're going to pretty just make them all even for right now because we are going to need to true our pressure plate once we've got the engine installed and the frame and we've got the cable hooked up and the center adjustment done. At that time, we'll go ahead and true the pressure plate. We're going to show you that. Basically, what you're doing, I'll just explain it real quick. There, they are all about even. When I'm referring to truing the pressure plate, when you've got this all adjusted up, you can go and run this down right now even though we don't have the cable on.
What I'm referring to is when you pull your clutch cable in, that rod that goes through there pushes against this adjustor and moves the pressure plate out and that's what releases the clutch. Well, you want this plate to run true. So what we'll show you is clutch in, plate released and we'll use the kickstarter to turn the motor over and just this part will spin. The motor won't turn over. Just this will spin because the clutch is released and you'll see that it may be going like this, the very edge of this. You'll sight down the edge and if it's going like this then it's not true. So then you'll tighten or loosen the three screws until your plate runs nice and true.
That's all there is to that. Start with friction. End with a steel up against pressure plate. We don't have to worry about those adjustments just yet. We'll do that once we get it in the frame. Now, we can move along and go ahead and get our rotor and stator installed. So new rotor, new stator. I don't want an old rotor and stator in my fresh motor. I want a new rotor and stator. Rotor, once again, nothing more than a large magnet. Here's how your rotor will come to you with these big hunks of metal on it and that's to keep it from losing its magnetism while it's in the box. You got to peel those things off of there.
I like to use the 200-watt stator that we stock. Pairs well with the Podtronics voltage regulator. There's that. So we've already installed our key on our crank. We've already got our spacer washer on there, so this should just slide right on there over the key. Let's double-check our key. She's sticking up just a skosh. Imagine that. There she is, down in the groove. In the groove. Huh. That's a tight one. Jeez, I don't want to have to hammer my rotor on. I just happen to have an old rotor here. Let's see how this one fits. Wow, would you look at that? Goes right on. Let's just check the whole size real quick because we can. We'll do this in inches. There's our new one, about point 0.748. Let's just try the one that just slid on nicely. 0.749, so it's really not that much difference. It's close but no cigar. I think what I'm going to do is I'm going to grab my Dremel with a sanding drum on it and I'm just going to finesse that just a skosh because I really don't want to hammer it on even though it would probably go on. Got me a Dremel with a sanding drum.
[whirring sound]
Let's give that a whirl. I know what you're thinking. "It's a brand new part, it should fit right on there." That's not always the case. Sometimes things need to be finessed just a little bit. Look at that dang mess I made on that magnet. Okay. Let's see if she goes-- Oh, wait a minute. There's a little bit more beard fuzz on the other side there. There we go. Let's see how she goes now. She's still really tight. Let's just buzz her around a couple more times.
[whirring sound]
Let's see how she fits now. Oh, look at that. That's better. That's better, we'll just give her one little tap to seat her against that. There we go, look at that. There she goes. Now, we did have to beat her on but not so much as we would have if we wouldn't have gave it a quick sand. Okay. Now we have a lock tab and the nut. Notice the lock tab has a tang coincides with the keyway. As you're tightening this down, right now it's not really doing much of anything but when you get towards the bottom, see now it is, make sure the lock tab is sitting flat with the keyway and the rotor like so, okay?
Now, we're just going to tighten this down and bend the lock tab over and then we'll be ready to put our stator on. All right, once again we'll consult the Triumph rebuild manual for Torque Spec or your workshop manual, whatever you have handy. Let's see here. Rotor nut, 50-foot pounds. That seems a little excessive. Well, let's give her a whirl, see what happens. Let's run it up to 40 and see how she feels. Now, we're going to need our Lowbrow Customs Barbie Stairs in there. Oh, the other way round, silly.
I would say that's probably plenty tight at 40. Let's call it a day at 40. We do have a lock tab here, it's not like the rotor is going to fall off. All right, pick a spot. Get her started with a screw bar driver and we'll finish her off with a pair of pliers like so. That's what it should look like after you've bent your lock tab that'll keep that nut from coming loose. It doesn't have to be pretty, it just has to do its job. Okay, moving right along to the stator. Wire will face out. If you put the wire in, it may get eaten by the chain.
This is a later-- I'm sorry, an earlier motor where the wires are going to get put through this and come out the other side where on a later motor, they come out here. No hole on this motor there, it's down here. Sometimes these can be a little bear going through that hole, so what I like to do is I'll push these pins so that they're not right next to each other. Kind of get one behind the other. Let's give it a whirl. Hey, that felt like it went pretty well. Let's have a look and see if we're coming through where we need to be and how it looks on the other side before we go put that on to find out we got to take it off to fix it.
All right. I think I'm going to put a little bit of WD40 on here. I've gotten the two metal ends are through. That WD is making all the world a difference there and you can see how this thing is weirded out too. We'll straighten that up. You can see how this is much easier to get that sucker through there before you put it on. I think we went a little too far. Okay, so once again, the wire is going to face out. Now, let's pull that back out just a little bit because we're going good there. The three studs are going to go through these three holes. Ignore the other two, don't ask me why they have those there. They're obviously not even big enough to fit over the stud.
You're going to start it over the two long studs first because obviously it won't go over the short one until it gets there. You want to put this thing on as even as you possibly can. Okay. Now, see it started both the two long studs. That's good and then just kind of ease it over the magnet nice and smooth. Okay. Now, I can see that it's a little further on this one and that one, so then we'll just pull it back off just a skosh because it really needs to go on as evenly as possible. The reason it's not just sliding right on is because if you look at the edge of this, it's a whole bunch of plates of metal all stacked together and they're dragging on these threads.
So it can be a job to get it on there even, but we're going to get it. It seems like it keeps wanting to go on that one more than that one. Pull it back off again, it seems like it's sticking on this top one a little. Well, I tapped it on side to side and you can plainly see that the lamination here has got all weirded out. Once again, reproduction parts are great and wonderful, but sometimes it's not the end of the world, when we put the washer and the nut on there, it should flatten that back down, it won't affect the operation of this.
We do want to get all the three of our nuts started and the next important thing we are going to do is we are going to check the air gap between the rotor and the stator, it needs to be 8,000 all the way around. Rotate the motor, check it in three spots, rotate it, check it in three spots. We'll put our nuts on, we'll tighten them down and we'll just determine if we need to pull the sucker back off and the studs to get our clearance because that's really the only way you can do that.
I don't really like to hammer at home, it was having a hard time. It looks like maybe one of these three studs, maybe this one is off ever so slightly where it bent that. Once again, not the end of the world. We'll go ahead and put the locking nuts on here and see where we're at for our air gap. Deep socket required.
Okay, there we go. Now we're ready to check to make sure that we have proper clearance. Go ahead and get this in there the rest of the way. Okay, once again, 8,000 feeler gauge, just going to stick it in between the rotor and the stator. There she is in there. Try it in several different places. Look at that, it's beautiful.
Now, obviously it is going to fit looser if it's not right on a magnet, so you do want to try it. That's a tight spot, so there's an edge of the magnets right there. It's got plenty of clearance, pretty happy with that. Not so worried about that, that'll be fine. Now, we go ahead and rotate the motor. I know we don't have any pushrods in her but we'll go ahead and loosen up the spark plugs anyway. Okay, we'll rotate the motor to a new position and we'll check it again. I'm pretty happy with that. The reason we're doing this is because you don't want the magnet to come in contact with the rotor. If they touch each other, they're not going to like each other all that well, they'll be angry with each other pretty quickly.
If you determine that your clearance is off or you got a really tight spot on one side and not on the other, you can bend the studs over so slightly to move it. If you find it's real bad, no matter what you do it won't work, then you might want to check the run out on the end of the crankshaft, which is very unusual to find that on one of these engines. That actually went pretty smooth other than the fact that we bent that right there going on. Once again we didn't hurt anything, got my wire all the way through. That pretty much concludes this portion of the build.
As I've mentioned repeatedly, we can't do our final torque on the cylinder head and install our pushrods until it's in the frame. So the next time we get together, I actually have another engine in a frame, that's at the same point where we need to be to complete this mission. The chassis for this engine is not done, it won't be done for quite some time and I know you guys want to see the final portion of our engine rebuild series. So next time we get together we'll go ahead and show you that. We'll see you then.
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