It sounded so easy

[av8]

:? "Pop the top off that T-5 and make sure water hasn't gotten into it." Thus began the adventure with the new-to-me transmission for my F-1.

The box is metric, and of course there are no metric wrenches in Vern Tardel's Prune Orchard so I had to wait until today when I drug along a small box of foreign nut twisters.  "Popping" the top off is preceded by some substantial disassembly, as I soon discovered. It's very much like disassembling one of those clever oriental wooden puzzles in which segments must be pushed first one way and then another to free a piece that has just freed a piece before it.

So, once the selector cover had been removed and the rollpin that indexes the detent block to the selector shaft punched down and out, all that was needed was to remove the tailshaft/5th gear housing and roll the top cover (whose bolts I removed early on as the first optimistic step) to the right to disengage the shift mechanism from the 5th-gear lever and the shift forks from the sliders. You got all that?

It's at this point that the rest of the transmission looks like it's about to disassemble itself without further assistance from me.  The tailend of the 5th-gear fork shaft sags, as does the thrust washer on the back of 5th gear. The rear main bearing, no longer held in position by the tailshaft housing, decides it wants to leave its comfortable location, about the time I discover that the odd assortment of blocks and shafts and sliders in the top cover have also moved about on their own as the forward end of the main fork shaft slips out of its bore in the front of the cover -- the same cover I was told to "pop off" so I could look for water and other mischief inside.

As it turned out, the partial disassembly of a T-5 is a day at the beach compared to putting it back together, the first time, without benefit of instruction, and with nary an exploded drawing in sight. Suffice to say the process was cut and try, and cut and try, and cut and try some more -- all down with fresh ATF-safe sealant on the three mating surfaces involved . . . cover, tailshaft housing, and selector cover. By the time the fourth C&T results in a successful assembly in which the gear selector actually selects five distinct forward engagements, plus one in reverse, and the all-important neutral, the outside of the transmission, the tools, the top of the workbench, my shop apron, and my hands and forearms share a uniform coat of sticky, black, ATF-proof sealant.

I've had a few hours to decompress and it doesn't seem so bad now. The T-5 is whole again, in perfect condition internally -- as it was all along, and there's not so much as a hint of moisture inside -- never was.

I gotta wonder if ol' Vern wasn't just yankin' my chain . . .

[enjenjo]

But now the next one will be easy

[C9]

Man . . . that sounds like a total . . . complicated....

Too late now and maybe it's something you do anyway, but I've found it a great help to shoot a few pics along the way.

Used a Polaroid a few years back to shoot a dirt bike rear wheel prior to lacing on a new rim.
Subject bike was my nephews Suzuki RM 370 which I thought had the same lacing pattern as my TT500.  Not....

Pics saved the day.

[av8]

But now the next one will be easy

Frank -- If I was a real sport I'd tear it apart and put it back together a couple more times. Like that's gonna happen . . .

Jay -- Even if I had a camera handy I would probably have missed seeing the original arrangment of the shifter forks and blocks inside the cover because it all went south when the main fork rod came out the front of the cover all by itself.  

[enjenjo]

Frank -- If I was a real sport I'd tear it apart and put it back together a couple more times. Like that's gonna happen . . .  

If you had done that, you would be an expert, so the next time, you could be embarrassed anew.