Reply to thread

Fitting the cam plate --

• The shop manual says to place the cam in 4th gear with the knuckle end of the quadrant aligned to the top front cover stud. This is correct, but what are you actually doing and if you are off one tooth what is the consequences?
• The quadrant sticks through the inner case and has a rectangular area that it is allowed to move in. If the quadrant is not located on the cam properly, say one tooth too low, you will be able to get neutral through 4th gears, but not 1st gear. As the following pictures will show, the quadrant is almost touching the top of its opening in the inner case when in 4th gear and almost touching the bottom in 1st gear. It is really disappointing to put the whole gearbox together and find you positioned the quadrant wrong.
• I suggest you put the quadrant and cam together, then place the inner case in position and verify that you can get all four gears. With the gears missing you can see the cam indices, or notches, and plunger through the kickstart shaft hole in the inner case. I screw the index plunger in just enough that the plunger touches the cam, but not all the way. This lets you easily move the cam to verify you are getting all four gears. When I say get all four gears, I mean the plunger will fit into the gear notches in the cam.
• The following picture is of the cam plate and its five indices or notches (1st, neutral, 2nd 3rd and 4th). The cam is positioned in 4th gear by the plunger and notice the position of the quadrant.
  
  
• The following picture is of the quadrant without the cam. This shows how the quadrant is positioned when in 4th gear. You can see that the first tooth at the top of the quadrant will fit with the cam plate gear.
  
  
• The following picture is the quadrant fitted to the cam and in 4th gear, seen with the inner case in place.
  
  
• The following picture is taken looking through the kickstart hole in the inner case. In this case the cam is in 1st gear, the neutral notch is to the right of the first gear notch. You will be able to see the index plunger fit into each gear notch on the cam as you move the quadrant. This way you can verify that you are getting all four gears before you actually assemble the gearbox. If you can get all four gears in this step, but when you assemble the box and try to shift it with the shift lever and it does not shift and the ratchet spring is bent correctly, you have the quadrant one tooth too high. This mainly will occur with the MK3 gearboxes due to a larger window for the quadrant arm.
  
  
• The following picture is the quadrant fitted to the cam and in 1st gear, seen with the inner case in place.
  
  
• Fit the O-rings (04-0129) into both the quadrant and camplate shafts and secure with the bolt (04-0136) and washer (00-0174) for the camplate and the pre-MK3 quadrants. For the Mk3 quadrant, use the O-ring (04-0129), washer (06-5149) and circlip (01-9512).
• The shaft of the camplate is supposed to stick out past the casting boss slightly, so that you can tighten up the bolt and the cam shaft will still rotate. I have found in some cases the camplate shaft is too short or the gearbox shell casting is too long and I can not tighten up the camplate. What I have had to do is take a thin 1/4" washer that the O.D. is less that the I.D. of the casting boss, File out the I.D. of the washer so it will fit over the bolt, and this will shim out the camplate shaft enough to be able to get it tight.