Post
by bpdinse » Sun Dec 12, 2010 11:50 pm
My sincere thanks to Loud Mouse! Today he saved me a few times (and a few hours worth of work at least) and I had to post to thank him. There is also some wisdom here that he may have shared many times over and I just haven’t seen it posted yet.
So I am tearing down my CA77 engine to fix a bad second gear problem. This is the second CA77 engine I have torn down. My first engine was just this past week, being a parts engine I bought to get - you guessed it – parts. I worked on this one first to practice since this is my first time w/this type of engine and I didn’t want to mess up the good engine. The parts engine came apart easily as it had a seized piston and the crank wouldn’t turn. This made it easy to crank on things that would have otherwise rotated along with the crank on a free moving engine.
The first thing I came across today was on the clutch side. I was trying to remove the lock nut. I was hammering away with a screw driver and a hard plastic ended hammer. The darn engine just kept turning over as I knocked that nut around. I tried heat and penetrating oil – still would not budge. Loud Mouse to the rescue (time #1)! His direction was something like …‘get a chisel and knock the hell out of it’. I selected a half inch chisel and switched to a metal hammer and whacked the hell out of it twice and it gave. Wonderful! Problem #1 solved.
The second issue I had was on the rotor side. I was trying to get the rotor off. I have a rotor puller that I made. I had it screwed in and again I can’t seem to get it screwed in without the rotor and the engine turning over. So I guess I didn’t learn the first time and Loud Mouse came to the rescue for the second time. He told me to hold the rotor with one hand, put a wrench on the puller, and give the wrench a sharp blow with a hammer. He explained that it is the shock of the sharp blow that is needed to release it. I did this and a few blows later the rotor released. Nice! Problem #2 solved. And now I have learned a lesson on translating a sharp blow to release these types of items.
The third issue came when I was splitting the lower engine. I followed his advice from other posts on placing a piece of hardwood on the top side bolts (w/14mm nuts at top) and beating on them. This separated the halves perfectly on the first parts engine last week. Great. Well, this was not working on my other running CA77 engine today. I beat on that piece of wood off and on for a half hour. The piece of wood was all chewed up. I finally asked Loud Mouse (now I am feeling like I am wearing out any welcome I may have). A very friendly Loud Mouse asked me about the washer under the “sealing nut” (that weird nut on the bottom of the engine (90241-259-000)). The washer was in fact stuck on there. I knew right away what he was talking about because I couldn’t get it off easily earlier. I figured – it is a washer – it will come off when I separate the lower half. Wrong! He told me that that washer was what was keeping the engine from splitting. I pried it off with a screw driver and then went back to beating on the two upper side studs and the engine split. Holy ----! Problem #3 solved. I can’t believe that that washer was holding the thing together.
I really appreciate the experience and direction I received today from Loud Mouse and I wanted to share and to say “thanks!!!!”.
I am new here. I know there are many that have wisdom/experience to share and have shared many times. I have experienced some of that already. I hope I can some day do the same.
So that is all for now. Loud Mouse also gave me some great insight into what I found on my transmission. It is no wonder that my second gear was not engaging – I found severely rounded dogs, severely worn shift fork, and chewed up shift drum. I’ll post another thread in a couple days on what I found and what the after looks like with pictures and all. I have yet another parts engine and I am thinking I’ll tear it down and see if I can come up with a better shift drum and one more shift fork.
