This is the fourth part (check out part three 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.
With helpful tips and tricks, Todd takes a step by step walk through on the disassembly of timing chest and transmission. He shows you what to look for and how to know when certain motorcycle custom parts need replaced along with helpful tips on how to remove nuts, gears and those pesky cheese head screws.
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You can read a full transcription of this video below:
Okay, now we got our primary part. I think we’ll attack the timing area next.
Let’s take this off and see what we have inside here. See if there’s anything in here or not. Honestly can’t remember where this motor came from. I do know that I have a frame to go with it. Hey, look at that. We got some points in there. Points cover off. Two pillar bolts here for the points plate. This wire’s going to need to come through the hole. So, I’ll have to remove these ends. That one just came apart.
I think we’ll squirt a little WD-40 in there that’ll probably aid that wire coming through there. She’s stuck. There it goes. There she comes. One punch plate removed. Okay, now we’ve got our advanced unit. That thing is not advancing anything. It’s stuck. Center bolt out of the advance. Now we’re going to utilize the advanced puller that we have available on the website and you just got to take care to make sure you’re using the correct end of this because there is two different thread pitches.
That one doesn’t have like it wants to go in there. We’ll try the other end. That is the correct end for this advance, early and late threads on there. This is just like a slide hammer action. This also has a taper. It goes into the end of the camshaft. No big deal there. Got those off. Okay, here’s the cheese head screws I was speaking of that are normally found on these motors. This may be an indication that this motor's not been apart before.
Judging by the fact that it had socket head on this side and these on this side, you would think if someone took this apart, it probably would have changed the screws. Now for stuff like this, I really like snap-on screwdrivers. Most high-quality screwdrivers will have a hex on the shank where you can utilize a wrench to help you. Look at that. This gives you a little more leverage. Again, if you get some stubborn ones get your chisel back out, shock them with the chisel.
That’s a bummer. We got a little chip out of the timing cover. That’s too bad. I suppose it could be welded up and ground down and polished. These timing covers aren’t too difficult to find if you do find that you need to replace one. One thing worth noting, you’re going to have a couple of longer screws in these locations. Short, in these. Okay, now we’re ready to take the cover off. We have all the screws out. The advance is removed. Shock it with our dead blow.
I think she’s been on there for a while. Absolutely, do not put a screwdriver in between this cover and the crankcase. You will create a leak. Speaking of leaks, we got a little bit of oil coming out of there. There she comes and that’s what you’re going to find underneath there.
Okay, cam gears, intermediate gear, pinion gear, oil pump. No big mystery going on here. This is standard thread. These are left-hand threads. If you put your impact on here and try to take that off in the normal fashion, you’re probably going to screw it up. Left threads. All right, we’ll take the oil pump off. Notice these nuts are-- Don’t have a whole lot of flat to them and they are beveled. Make sure you-- They have a lock washer so make sure you put those in your parts box for later when it comes time to put her back together.
Then your pump should just slide right off of there. [chuckles] Once in a while, it is okay to pry on things carefully. Like so. Here’s your oil pump. Now, we can gain access to removing these three nuts. Once again, left-hand thread. Since I don’t have a compressor here in the garage, it’s broken, I will be doing this by hand. I will show you a nifty way to do this that works very well. All right, the best method to lock these together to loosen these is to use an old pinion gear.
I know what you’re thinking. You don’t have one. At least, maybe get one. It makes this job a hell of a lot easier. See how that just locked? See it? I’m guessing this is going to be pretty tight because it should have been torqued. Give it a shot. She’s a definitely tight. So, we’re going to cheat. Old fork tube. Man, look at that boy came right loose no problem. A little bit of leverage. Once again, pinion nut is standard thread.
There you go. The nut also has a little shoulder on it. That’s how you can tell the difference between these because these look kind of similar. That engages with the lip on there. Okay, once again left-hand threads. I don’t think we’ll waste time trying to break this up. Without our bar on there, our fork tube. There she goes. And you may notice on the intake cam has this little tit here, basically, that's what drives the oil pump.
This part slides over that, this goes on that as the gear spins around, it moves these plunges up and down, which in turn sends the oil through those ports. Pretty ingenious. You also may notice that this tit on here says LH, that stands for left hand. One more nut to go here, this one. That ought to work.
Just like downtown. All three nuts removed. We can go ahead and take our locking tool out of there. Which is nothing more than one of those, this is from a pre-unit, so it is not as wide but either one will work. Now you can go ahead and take your intermediate gear out, that just slides right off, no problem.
These gears do have your timing marks on which you can review that in your workshop manual. When you are re-assembling everything. All three of these will line up, this one will have a dot on it, this one will have a hash mark on it and this one will two dots and a hash mark. Pretty simple stuff, not a problem.
Now you see why it is imperative that you don't hit these threads with your impact with a socket over it to get these nuts off because if you bugger up that thread you won't be able to get the puller on there. This is a cam gear puller and installer tool. This is the part that will remove it and this part also installs it with some different adapters that you put on there. This is standard thread. This is just going to thread on there, and you want to make sure again that you engaged all the threads on there because you're pulling on it.
Then you're just going to turn this down till it contacts the end of the cam and you may have noticed, there's a bunch of gnarled on here that's because I like to hold this tool with this. That way it doesn't turn. The you're simply going to-- Oh goodness gracious boy, I don't think this motor has ever been apart. That is being stubborn once again we are going to use a little leverage here.
I was having a hard time turning that by hand. It seems like it is starting to come off now. Now it's pulling the gear off of the end of the intake cam, and she's just about off. This is also keyed and there we go. No harm, no foul.
Generally, as I take this apart, I'll get another one of my cardboard boxes and I will just set everything in the box. This one goes here, this one here, this one in the middle and this one at the bottom with the keys and all the parts here's the key right there, and side cutters again. Just carefully, pry that little key out of the keyway on the end of the cam, put that with the gear we just removed.
When you're pulling the exhaust cam, you don't want this portion of the tool that just met that as I was-- You saw how hard I was pushing on that with my additional leverage, we don't want this to go down inside there because that's where this was. There's a piece that we can put in there and this little piece right here will go on there like so.
So that you are pushing against this surface and this instead of that portion of that tool going in the hole and screwing things up. So be sure you have that on there. What I like to do right now, to make my life a little easier as I will lay the motor over. That way I am not fumbling with this, trying to get that to stay on there while I am pulling it.
So, we'll go ahead and turn this back out and then I'm just going to lay this up on it's edge so I can put this in the there, so it doesn't fall out while I put this portion on. Again make sure that you get your tool to engage all the threads available there because we are using those threads to pull.
We'll go ahead and proceed here once again. We got our little chinga inside there, we run this up to touch it, this is threaded on all the way, put your channels locks on there again. Oh boy, she's a tight one too. And there she comes, now she is getting easier.
See the gear coming off of the can shaft and there it is. We didn't bugger nothing up. Once again don't forget to use a little chinga, that comes with the tool.
Don't forget to take the other key out of that one, put it with the gear so the only thing we have left to do here is to remove the pinion gear and we have a special tool for that too. There she is. Pinion gear remove. Once again make sure that parts backed off, you're going to loosen this. And these three pieces are going to go over the gear once we get it loose enough. Then you are going to tighten this down.
Before you start pulling, you want to check to make sure, yes, see that one didn't go over, so we are going to re-position that because we don't want to start pulling if all three of those aren't-- Okay, once again you can just roll it over with the tool on there.
You want to be sure that all three of those will call them fingers on that tool are over the edge of the pinion gear. There is a gap. In between the pinion gear and where the tool goes, then you're going to tighten that up by hand and you're just going to run this in.
I don't think I've ever had a pinion gear come off as easily as this one is. There we go. Once again we have another keyway and now you can plainly see how the tool was around the edges of the gear. It's imperative that all three of those are on the back side of this or it will just pull the tool right back off in your hand. There's a pinion gear pretty much in necessity I don't really know of any other way to get that gear off of there without this tool and it the same goes for that tool.
Now we have our key. Once again slide cutters to the rescue. Look that one it’s not in there all that tight, got her out. We also have a washer. There she is. That’s all there is to the timing chest area, is now completely disassembled, in preparation for splitting the crankcases.
Let’s go ahead and remove the transmission. Once again we’ve got some cheesehead screws on here. We’ll utilize our fancy-shmancy screwdriver here.
We missed one. Oh, goodness.
All right, we have a stubborn screw on the bottom. We’re going to chisel that son of a gun. Some of you guys may have one of those impact screwdrivers, where you basically put a bit in there and you beat it with a hammer, that would also work.
This [bleep] is pissing me the [bleep] off.
She’s trying to turn but my chiseling may have defeated-- There she comes.
It’s coming, gang.
We have one more fastener on here should be two nuts. Appears that one is missing. There we go. Chisel times over. Finish taking these out. If the chisel method did not work on that screw the next step would have been to get the drill motor out. Basically what you can do then, is you can drill the head of the screw completely off. Then you’ll be able to get the cover off and the screw will still be in there.
Gee, I wonder how much transmission oil is going to come out of this thing here in a second all over the work bench? There she is. Let’s grab a drain pan this time. That way if there’s a bunch of tranny fluid in here it’ll go in there instead of on my workbench, is plenty oiled enough for today. Once again you’re whack. Not happening. There she comes. Look at that. I used the old noodle that time. There goes one of our washers we might need for later. Kick starter’s spring was hanging up in there guys. There we go. There’s our kicker cover. Kicker gear, kicker spring. Now we’re getting to the heart of the matter.
This is your ratcheting gear for your kick starter, another bent lock tab there that we need to bend up, like so. Look at that we got lucky again. [laughs] Normally that would take a socket to come off of there. We have a flat washer. A spring, the center distant piece, and the ratcheting gear itself lock tab there’s everything involved with that little assembly. This is your main shaft here and boy we’ve got some more oil on there that we need to get out of there. Then we’ll get some more fasteners out, we’ll pop this cover off, take the tranny out.
All right, Phillip’s head inside here. That’s a good thing because I don’t think we’d been able to get the chisel in there. Then we have the socket head one here. Last but not least the hex head on the bottom in the front. This one has a shallow head on it too. The oil lines slightly in the way. Done that our way just a skosh.
There we go.
Ready for a big oily mess again? Just to review three fasteners. Little bit of corrosion going on there. That’s are our inner tranny cover. Now we can go ahead and dump whatever else might be left in there besides that gear.
Let’s get one of our boxes so we can go ahead and show you how easy it is to remove the rest of this stuff here. The gear that you saw fall off of there belongs to the lay shaft. You can just pull the main shaft right out. Bada bing. You can take the other gears if you’re not familiar with this stuff it’s probably not a bad idea to just put it back where it belongs when you take it out. You have another gear inside here on the main shaft actually we’ll go ahead and pull the shift shaft out that’ll make it easier to get these other gears out.
There she is. Good and you have shift fork. Another gear that belongs to the main shaft right here. Now we could just yank the whole countershaft off in one big lump sum. Bam done. And then you've got fourth gear which goes through the bearing in the case, which also belongs on the main shaft. Then last we have the selector, cam selector, cam plate. And here is a roller from one of the shift forks has little roller deal on there. A roller on each one. That rolls along and these little grooves when she's shifting gears and last but not least, it doesn't want to come off, stuck. Okay, we won't be too concerned about that but there is a thrust washer in there. There's a thrust washer on here.
Right here, right on the layshaft and there's another one inside the case right there. It's stuck on the inside, we'll get it out after we get stuff cleaned up here. That's it, transmissions removed. Right, so we've essentially stripped off the majority of the parts off of here that we need to in order to split the crankcases. That will be coming up in the next installment of tear down your 650 Triumph engine. Now get out there in your garages and rip these things apart. Do it, do it now.
You need those strings to pull, holy guacamole, this son of a gun's is got a bunch of oil in the crankcase. Gang oh goodness, hang on regroup, let's get her back upright here. More than one way to get that oil out of this motor. Son of a [bleep].
You can check out the Triumph 650 Motorcycle Engine Disassembly & Rebuild - Part 5 to continue following along!
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