Kickstart lever stuck on splines

hobot » Sun Apr 22, 2012 10:12 pm

Very good to hear the other shoe drop for peace of mind. I've no shop so would had to farm it out. I guess you've figured out how to avoid this next time.

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I have a good neighbour with a good supply of tools who is kind enough to let me use them. The first one was hard to get out, then hard on the way back in before it broke. It may have been cross threaded or buggered up previously to keep it in there.

DogT » Sun Apr 22, 2012 11:35 pm

Good, but for sure get the grade 8 bolt for that junction. And tighten the crap out of it.

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Put a Grade 8 in, bit leery of overtightening and doing a repeat performance. Threaded in nicely though, unlike the one that broke. I can see it will have to be very tight. I'l put the torque wrench on it. Anyone use Locktight?

Now to go into the Primary case and clean the clutch plates

Don't use locktite. Spec 8 is good, spec 12 even better. I have found when tightening this particular bolt, I seem to be a feel of a definate stop. At that point I go no further and it seem to stay good. I am not sure what torque is reached but it is pretty tight. Make sure your bolt utilizes all the thread in the kickstart lever.

I wouldn't use loctite, nor have I. But you may want to open up the clearance hole the bolt goes in. When the thing starts pinching, if there's not enough clearance in that hole, it will bind or try to bend the bolt. Not good for tightening. I don't use a nut on the other side, but the bolt sure goes through all the threads but doesn't stick out. I do use a flat and plenty of nickel anti-sieze. I guess if you feel like a nut, that's ok, I just haven't felt the need. I tighten it up nearly as hard as I can with a standard 1/2" rachet, not the 3' extension. You can feel if you've gone to far, but a grade 8 will take a lot of torque and there are a lot of threads in the far end of the lever.



Dave
69S

Yup,skip the locktite and lean hard on the ratchet or powerbar,nothing will break.

If you intend to ride much and regular then the factory internal threads and bolt will allow wiggle wobbles til the splines themselves bugger and distort and mis align to prevent removal even harder than part of a bolt left in the way. The more ya try to tighten the factory bolt the sooner it will fail but if ya don't then the kicker splines do. Also had the factory bolt-treads get trapped by the splines gradually distorting so shifted the seating of shaft in lever. After I suffered w/o machinist tools to get the bugger out I swore off factor system forever more.

Grade 8 or better bolt needs to be long enough to stick completely though with a full nut's worth of threads exposed. I do not use a washer and tighten so hard loctite is just silly putty wasted. I tighten so tight I don't put a wrench on it to remove w/o some flame first. I did not tear up my first two Combat levers, those before me sticking with the Norton way did.

A good state of tune also helps protect the splines.
I'm considering a couple of big set screws placed to help jam it up solid longer.

I employed an old Jap bike field repair, clamped the kicker in a vice with the gap closed, ran a hacksaw down through there, removed the first 5 splines in either direction, ow she clamps tight, no looseness.

Hm, I'll have to try removing 5 splines instead of 3 each side next time as Trixie's kicker is no longer solid fixed.

If you look closely at my picture, it looks like there are no splines on my lever for about 60° at the bottom. Maybe the early levers were made differently? The splines on my shaft are kind of buggered up, but the lever clamps down on the shaft fine.

Dave
69S

Yes , with my 3 Nortons (genuine original kickers) it looks like the splines were changed/ modified different on differing years. Obviously the factory was working on this problem.