Yesterday, I was looking into clutch adjustments to try and improve my slippage. While looking in the repair manual, I discovered two adjustment points behind service covers on the front of the gear box. Oddly enough, my box has the service covers, but there is nothing behind them.
I've also been suffering from poor shifting on The Blackhawk and I know it's because the ratchet mechanism is getting badly worn. I tried getting some play out of it before without luck, and I continue to get false neutrals and missed shifts. So while I had the inspection covers off yesterday, I decided to take another look at the ratchet mechanism and saw something I hadn't seen before. (Funny how you smoke a little medicinal marijuana and you suddenly see things differently and come up with new approaches that you hadn't previously thought of
)
Now the problem is that the ratchet wears out and gets excessively sloppy which causes poor shifting, and sometimes impossible shifting depending on how badly it is worn. My particular problem was that I couldn't get the shifter itself tight enough against the gear box to remove any of the slop that has developed. Looking at the mechanism sober, "F*#k. What am I going to do?" Looking at it stoned, "Dude! Just put a small pry bar inside the inspection cover, wrap a ratchet strap around the engine and tighten it over the pry bar forcing the ratchet shift spline all the way against the gearbox cover!"
I then took a trip down to Ace Hardware and found some 1" ID x 1 1/2"OD machine bushes. I picked up 2 - 18g bushes and 1 -14g bush. They were still a hair too small ID to fit over the shifter splines, so I took my drill and a 3/8" drill bit and just slowly reamed out the ID on the bushes until they slid freely over the spline without being sloppy. I ended up only using 1 -18g bush for this job and it was less than $3 for all 3 of them.
After reaming the bush big enough to fit over the splines, I was ready to reattach the shifter. I took a large deep socket (I believe 24mm) with my left hand forced the shift lever against the gearbox and bush as tight as I could. I then used my right hand to retighten the shift lever with my cordless impact.
The results were satisfactory. Sure, there is still a little bit of play, but the shifts are
MUCH cleaner and firmer. But the best part is that I was able to do this mod in about 15 minutes for only a couple of dollars, as opposed to ordering a new ratchet assembly from England.
Scottie