It's on about 17K. During the 1st 10K and 2 owners it'd never been out in the rain. Then I bought it :frown: It's had a hard life and the known weak spot has shown itself. The gear box, well 2nd and 3rd to be precise. Getting all clunky, not wanting to engage. I parked it before too many bit's of teeth and selector dogs ended up in sump. It's spent a lot of time on the back wheel being stamped through the gears or drifting into corners on the brakes so it's my own fault. So long as you have some mechanical sympathy you shouldn't have trouble. And as I'm seeing. Even in my hands the actual engine is sweet, no signs of wear. I'll set the valve shims before putting it back together and any other bits too but it's definitely a keeper. I doubt I'll even put the High Comp pistons in like I initially thought and just save to sort the suspension. Ducati for the poor
You'll not need to worry about your V-strom engine Red Duck, that lump is generally regarded as bulletproof, and only sustained abuse will bring out the faults. In road use the weaker part of the setup is the clutch, which has a pretty poor action, and a bit too much play between bearing surfaces than can make the engine feel like it's chugging at low rpm (called 'chudder' on various TL/SV forums). It's curable, but at a price, so most people just put up with it.
It's had the "chudder" since I bought it new in 2004. Smoothes out nicely at 4000 revs and is just a nice real world engine. I've serviced it myself mainly although I still haven't had the valve clearances checked. (Wouldn't dare do that with the Duc) Have thought of selling it but for what it's worth it's prolly not worth it.
Ok folks. So I ended up buying a flywheel puller (£21) but it's meant the flywheel pulled off, quite easily too:smile:, sp I pulled the cam chain drive shaft out while I was there. A nice big 36mm socket with a 2 foot long bar and the primary gear came off next. Then I thought great, nearly there, lets undo all the casing bolts, which I did. Before noticing the selector mechanism should come out. With that out I decided to take the oil cooler and starter motor out. Yeah I know, bit of a funny order to do things but I am all full of Christmas cheer right now. Anyway, while turning the engine to take a photo of said work, it fell over. Neatly popping the unbolted cases apart. Lovely So I pulled the right casing off to expose, well, not the horror I was expecting. So out the gear box came with selector forks and drum, all to be checked tomorrow. I'll let you know my findings soon. But I'm guessing the selector dogs will be buggered on the lower gears, along with maybe the selector forks. :frown:
Well, after working all the hours god sent to find the £700 just to replace the worn and damaged gears, I found a possible EBAY bargain. Below is half my old box, if you look at the dogs closley you should see the wear. Which I didn't think was too bad. Now, i found a complete TL R bottom end on fleabag starting at 99p but having a rod about to detatch itself from the crank. So i took a punt and won at, well, £21. I wasn't too hopefull of their being much savable in the gearbox but if i got 1 good gear out of it it would be worth it. When i finally got the thing apart, some nuts were alot tighter than my engine, look what i found. A mint gearbox. Every gear, on both stafts, absolutly fine. I don't normally get this type of luck. What a result :biggrin: So it's on with the build. After I find my haynes manual. I can never easily work out getting the selector drum and forks right first time round.
Don't ask me for advice, I haven't got a clue. Glad you had a result though..imagine trying to be so lucky with a Ducati gearbox
slightly off topic ... does anyone with a 1*98 suffer what is described above ie chudder.?I feel like I have this at a constant 3 or 4k revs on a constant throttle.
Interestingly, Suzuki have just launched a new V-Strom 1000, and apparently the engine is largely new, even though it looks similar. No sign of a harder version of the engine in a sports bike though - perhaps they'll do something about it, or maybe the TL got such a bad reputation that they won't bother?
Incidentally, the 'chudder' mentioned on TLs was purely down to the clutch; the basket was very poorly manufactured and allowed too much movement. There is an ameircan guy who will rebuild your clutch basket with brass bushes for a much better fit and smoother action, but it ain't cheap.
Well. My chudder was a full on clunk. Loss of drive as the dogs slipped out of their mating gear, then the mechanical bang and jolt through the whole chassis as they engaged in the next slot of the mating gear. All very exciting while hard on the gas coming out of a corner. Todays episode involved searching the house for my manual, which was under an open tool box in the spare room/carbon fibre workshop, and dry fitting of the gears and selectors into the cases. All which has gone well up to now. Pictures to follow when i actually start bolting it all together. Still not having a gasket set or impellor I see me not getting too far.
So, with the gear box fitted, a quick try of the right case seemed to fit quite easily. So I put i bit of sealant around the edge and drop the right casing into place. WTF! Now I'm sure that gap wasn't there before. So I take the right casing back off, remove the gear box, check everything, nothing obvious, fit the box, try agin, still a gap, so I take the right casing back off, remove the crank, check everything, nothing obvious, try agin, still a gap, so I take the right casing back off, remove the gear box, check everything, nothing obvious, fit the box, try agin, still a gap, repeat until my baby son, Vincent, saves me from having an engine shaped hole in my lawn and a window to fix. He's a good lad already that boy :smile:
I may be complexly off base but isn't that gap for the lower skirt of the barrel to fit inside the crankcase?
It's not the gap around the piston, you're right that's for the barrel skirt. It's the few mm gap between the cases that's the problem:frown:. I even went against all good practices and tried to pull the cases together by bolting it up. No joy with that:frown::frown:, so a few more attempts at taking bit's out until it fits neatly has revealed it's just the output shaft and gears that are preventing the cases fitting together. I can have everything else fitted and they close perfectly:smile:. But even just the output shaft with it's gears and it doesn't go together so at least I've narrowed it down:smile:. It's not like a Ducati though. There's no shims at all in the gearbox. Sort of one size fits all I guess. There are a couple of thrust washers but that's it. Got a busy couple of days ahead so it's just going to be one of those nagging problems on my mind until I can get back to it. Here we go again
Thanks Steve, that was on my list of options, along with trying to build it in the other cases Now I'm not trying to make excusses but, with working 7 days a week, Valentines day, a 44th wedding anniversary and a funeral all in a week I'm not ashamed to admit I only swapped gear box shafts yesterday. Look at this though. It seems the bottom end i bought was a late TL R set and there are a few changes/improvements, but I really want to keep my numbers so had to keep my orignal cases. Anyway, didn't need to worry as toady, after getting up at 5am, riding 10 odd miles in whatever version of freezing it was this morning for work at 6. Then leave again at 8, ride back though rush hour to get ready for a funeral at 9:15, home 4pm ish and by 6 my TL cases were together. Now to pull it all apart to clean it, grease it up a bit then build for real. Where upon it probably won't go back together. Might be ready for summer :smile: when i wanted it for winter
