Messages

the clutch basket spacer washers behind the clutch are different thicknesses between rd and r5. make sure you have proper clearnce there. the primary gear and clutch gear should be flush to each other. but, before that, you can put the trans in the lower part of the case and turn the drum to check gear engagement & operation before fully assembling. like said, put in N, drop gears in (yes its the part at 6 o'clock in the pic). if it doesnt work, check the shift forks arent swapped, common issue. you'll get it.

This^
Shift forks are confusing on these as I have found. They WILL go together wrong. Most likely culprit. I didn't see anything wrong in the trans. As you stated, it was never taken apart by you, so...

Hmm, when you say swapped do you mean the set of forks are on the wrong shaft or do you mean the forks are in the wrong order on the same shaft. It's confusing because all four forks look the same.

You say that it will only go into 1st and 2nd yet in your assemble picture it is shifted into 4th. I have a 250 case and trans apart that I could take pics but yours looks like everything is assembled right.

Yeah, i took that photo before I realized i had installed the shift drum not in neutral. 

Well, I took the engine completly apart again, I found quite a bit of metal shavings which looked like aluminum in the case, I have read somewhere that Rd clutches can hit the r5 case and you need to grind down areas of the case but I can't find any damage anywhere to indicate where the shavings have come from, there is no damage to the inside of the case or the clutch, although there was a noise when the clutch was disengaged which is what made me think it was hitting in the first place. As far as a shifting issue goes, I didn't see anything interesting, and it's now bare cases again.

I'm really at a loss here and have no clue what the issue could be. I've looked at as many photos diagrams and videos of rd internals as I can find and I don't see anything out of place.

  I will likely be putting the 5 speed trans back in it with all the r5 parts and hoping that it works, since there were no issues with the transmission before. Maybe this r5 just wasn't meant to have six speeds.

I took some photos of the parts.

I never took any of these gears off and so it's impossible that they are somehow wrong, these came from a working rd250 trans.






No damage in here at all and yet it was chattering when I pulled the clutch.

did you swap the shift shaft as well? they are different.
my trick is always set the drum to neutral, then drop the trans in. it should spin free. if not, then its wrong.

Yes, all the parts were from the RD, the R5 only has three forks. It did spin free but it doesn't shift past 2nd.

Where the drum is in neutral, that kinda cut out area of the detent wheel should be on the detent right? Because that's what I did.

I think you might have either a shift fork in wrong, or one of the dog's is backwards. When my bike wouldn't shift past second it was one of the gears in backwards.

I guess I'll just have to take it all apart and mess around with the forks again and try them in all the positions possible, I doubt it's a gear issue because I never disassembled the gears from the shafts, I directly swapped them from the case they were in. My main mistake was not taking photos of the rd transmission fork/drum assembly and how it was assembled. Had I known how hard it would be to find any info photos or documentation for how it's supposed to go back together, I would have.

So I made a previous thread about this when I was putting the engine together, but didn't really get to the bottom of it. I decided to just put the thing together and see if it would work, since it was so hard to determine if it was working while the engine is on the bench. I have the bike all together now, and it only has two gears, it will go into first with difficulty and then into second again with difficulty, it makes a noise when I pull the clutch, I think the clutch must be rubbing on the inside of the case. I cannot get any gears beyond second even while riding the bike.

This mirrors my issues I had on the bench, obviously this is a disappointment since the engine runs great and this setback will most certainly mean the bike is not going to be finished before the snow falls this year.

The bikes looks nice at least?



Here are my photos of the transmission internals from before. Yes I did correct the star wheel before I assembled it. I used all the parts from a 1975 rd250 which was a working transmission.

Apologies for the lack of updates, it's not because I haven't worked on it. In fact the bike is fully assembled.

Here are some photos I took of the paint work.








The paint turned out, ok, as usual with bodywork the mistakes you make during the process compound upon the final product but it looks fine to everyone who isn't me.

Here is the bike this afternoon after the first start of the engine.




The engine seems to run great at least at idle and in first and second gear, the oil pump is working and the electrical is mostly working.

Sadly my previous misgivings about the 6 speed rd transmission swap have proved to be justified, and the bike only has first and second and won't shift beyond those gears. I have made a previous thread the tech help section with photos of the inside of the transmission but no ne seemed to have any suggestions and I couldn't find anything wrong after messing around with it on the bench for hours; which is why I decided to just chalk it up to me being paranoid and continue on.

I will make a new post and ask for further suggestions since there is obviously some major issue, this 6 speed is from an RD250 and worked fine when that RD250 engine ran and was on the road. If I can't figure it out I will just put the thing back to stock 5 speed and that will be that.

how the fuck did you get an arm in the filler neck? 

and. looks good.

lol, I'm a skinny person.

So I really need to update this, I've made quite a bit of progress. I installed the swing are with new bronze bushings from Economy cycle and the headset with new bearings as the old ones are all rusted. Lots and lots of time at the bench grinder polishing individual nuts and bolts. I have the wheels shod in new tires, and I've installed the rear, I polished and cleaned up all the parts as best I could but not all of it is in great shape, the plating is all peeling off the brake lever for the rear brake and I should probably find a better one. The aluminum parts polished up nicely.




I have the engine fully assembled, and I have the cylinders back from machining, I have them painted, but I need to do the sanding/filing of the fin edges before I can install them.



I've started in ernest on the bodywork because I need to finish the headlight mounting brackets to install the front fork.



yikes



The fuel tank is bashed in every corner sadly and the paint is original but burnt off the upper parts.





I was actually able to get my skinny arms inside the fuel filler on this tank with a dolly and remove the small dents from the forward part of the tank, at the rear I wended studs and slide hammered the big creases out and then tried to iron them out a bit. They were far too deep before to fill with filler without having the filler shrink over the winter and look terrible.

I got the frame back from being powder coated, and it's looking great. Started reassembling the basics. I've got the bottom end of the engine assembled and have simply been doing the work of polishing/painting every little thing that has to be put back on the bike, a slow process.

Are you installing the clutch when testing? If not, the main shaft can slide and misalaign the gears. Also I don't see the snap ring that goes on the big bearing next to the clutch or the little bushing that fits where the shift shaft meets the shift mechanism that turns the drum.

I didn't have the clutch on initially and I think that was an issue. I'm also probably just being paranoid about it being correct since all these parts were just in a box,  On the r5, or at least on my r5, I wasn't able to use that snap ring, the r5 transmission uses a half moon clip in the location where that snap ring is on the RD and there is no recess machined into the top half of the r5 case to accept it, so I had to use the clip and remove the snap ring. Yes I have the bushing, it just wasn't on there for the photo.

You have to use ALL the RD trans parts in a R5.
Gears, drum forks and outer shifter sprawl. You can't use any R5 parts.
The clutch hubs are interchangeable but you must use the RD primary if you use a 7 plate later hub.
Stuff I learned on countless hours of research and lots of help from folks here too!

Yes, I have swapped all the parts in from the RD, including the clutch and primary. I think I'm just being paranoid, I have the whole bottom end together now and am just waiting for the cylinders to be done.

Are you rocking the counter shaft sprocket while shifting? If you dont have some movement in the shafts it will not shift.

There is a post from Chuck about the swap. It is under  team scream

Yes this is with me turning the gears, I mean, it's a bit hard to push on the lever while turning but I feel like it shouldn't be so stiff.

If you could link me that info that would be great because I just clicked on every post under "team scream" and I can't find anything about six speeds in r5s for whatever reason.

So I noticed the star wheel is reversed from other pictures I'm looking at, and so I've taken it apart again and turned it so that the cut out is facing the detent which must be how it's supposed to be. It seems to kinda shift now, but I'm not exactly getting it through all six gears smoothly, maybe I'm expecting too much on the bench I guess I should have tried it before to see how it feels. If no one can see anything else wrong, I'm just going to proceed and hope it works.