86 400 Enduro resurrection-help needed....Initial evaluation

Bodger . I stick my pikkies on Photobucket unchanged then link them to my comments.
If you click on "reply" you can see what the link looks like in the text.
Example

And sometimes it just gives you the photo.

its not really a dream, these bikes will light up first few kicks cold easily if tuned right, 1-2 kicks hot. just have to be a good kicker, and know how to do it.
it would be wise to pull the carb, record the jets/settings currently there and do a proper cleaning. i tend to be thorough but i have good results with these bikes and it is RARE i ever have a problem out riding, let alone be stranded. i dont mean to sound preachy, its just my way.
push starting these things kinda sucks..they tend to lock the tire up, be it pavement or dirt unless 3rd gear is used. the clutch plates like to stick together, making hard to get neutral by pulling the clutch. i like to convert my bikes to steel clutch plates instead of factory aluminum. seems to eradicate the issue.
as for a coolant drain, removing the waterpump is pretty much it. at least its the lowest point. the bolt on the side of the jug is an air bleed, never needed it tho. i just tip the bike side to side to get the air to the top of the system.

awesome brace of swedes dukkman. i like your style!
i have good luck posting pics here straight from my pc

Ahhh. thanks all.

Well, I have the camera software and it handles Windows XP and does batch resizng...so altho one try here refused the picture I'll try try again.

dukkman, nice setup, that's what I'd have but s.w.m.b.o. said we get a house in town. Looks comfy there..one of the initial owners lives off grid and has had Husky's since they were invented (i haven't met him, he's a friend of the p.o.)..and he has a pile of dead husky's he calls 'inventory canyon'. I may have to visit...and thanks for the photobucket advice, it is just sooooo slow I need to upload straight to the site, so...
That's an impressive collection of the White and Blue! Maybe mine will someday look that good!

and justintendo, thanks for the clutch advice and the info about the air bleed...the impeller looks great as does the case behind it. But I think I see the problem with the sticky trans lever, even before I take the case off. It's amazing what can be right in front of you, the scene camouflaged by the rust, dust, and oil spots:
the case has a huge gouge right above the shift lever, gouged into the case where the shift lever has ground into it, going up. The lever is bent so it's close when in neutral, but I may find the lever is broken, bent or the case bushing or case is cracked or worn...so something to look for when I take the case off. PBBlaster soaking and exercising it hasn't loosened it up...yet.

going to post this and then another for some pikkies...:>

thanks again
Bodger

Pikkies!

This shows the bike when I got it home, I forgot to take a picture in it's original spot as found where found, dammit.
It's on the Toyota truck workbench.

Anyway, it shows the ranch/artist/bodger solution to a lost smashed air cleaner cover. Pretty handy I say, only a few seeds and bits of grass and an earwig inside the aircleaner stuck in the grease. The air cleaner cover is made of some 3/16" plastic from...somewhere...saw kerfs for air intakes.

Notice the odd little screw in the right side barrel. I haven't seen that in any other people's pictures of the 400 86-88 engine. Maybe another bodge...maybe filling a bullet hole..

It also show the plastic ignition cover, the lack of chain cover..that needs to be a case protector, geez! I haven't noticed an aftermarket item...maybe I'll have to make one.

The chain case and protector is missing, probably a good idea to have one.

The sprocket is 12 teeth...pretty low gearing!..and with a 56 tooth rear sprocket I should be able to do a wheelie.
yaa haw.
Maybe I should add a drag strip wheelie bar.

As I am moving to an area (Humboldt County, northern california coast) with both trails, dunes, beaches, crappy mountain roads, fireroads...but also it has a regular short track series in a local fairgrounds as well as a drag strip!!... it's not such a bad idea...like training wheels only different.

The left. side pikkie shows the

So, there we go!......

...more to follow...

Life called...so back at it a bit tonight in the coming dark, I took the drive side case off hoping everything was ticky-boo, but worried the serious rock hit that
*bent the crash guard into the water pump
*creased the exhaust pipe
*cracked the water pump housing
*bent the shifter into the case that resulted in the huge gouge...
and now ten years or more later I am hoping I will find that the stuck almost frozen shift lever was just stuck from exposure rather than something seriously bent inside or a cracked case or cover.



_________________

This next picture shows the cracked bolt hole in the water pump cover, and the gouge from the bent shift lever. The radiator fluid was clear and the bright green you can see...not water...so hopefully internally no corrosion.

The water pump impeller looks ok. The bearing seems free and there is no play felt.

The cracked bolt hole is no big deal, not a priority for a runner. I will epoxy the hole, also will try to find some washers that fit the bolt recesses.



Now, on to take the drive side case off...

I removed the drive side case after sloshing paint thinner in there several times to flush the greyish putty in the trans case. That stuff is hard to get moving, so I'll get some diesel and a squirt can and long brush...but so far there are no broken steel or alum pieces..and I hope the putty is made of clutch dust rather than aluminum powder from say a spinning bearing case. Or worse...so it's not strictly necessary to get it spotless right now, just move the dust that will move for now and flush any last water globs or chunks of stuff...

The question to be answered is why is the shift lever so stiff, why doesn't it go into gear...yet?

I also want to look for any internal damage, the water pump area, the shift lever case support, and the bearings seen inside, as well as the clutch, kick start gears, any broken bits etc...

Here's what I found:



The needle bearings seen on the kickstand shaft and water pump seem intact and free of damage. The kickstart gear looks ok to me, the Noob.
The clutch is an '86 five spring, the plates are free, no gear teeth seen broken in the primary drive, the springs and shift linkage seem to look like they are supposed to..and no damage to the shift lever support area in the case....I was worried it might be broken from the rock damage seen outside. I will continue to soak it in PB Blaster.

The clutch has about .010-.015 play when pushed/pulled on the gear teeth in and out...left and right when seated that is. No play is felt at the crank bearings.

I have some questions..:

? That Clutch basket play seem ok?

? What is the gear seen behind the clutch?..it is part of the kickstart system?...It clinks around back there...I didn't take it out as something might fall out and it was now dark. Will the case go right back on or do I have a problem with that gear? I can figure out to line up the pump drive and shifter drive\, but I haven't figured out that loose feeling gear there.

? The spring at the right can easily be pulled out...I didn't but it would seem easy to do. Can I exercise the shifting at this point by turning the shifter slot seen there, lower right under the clutch...?

Here's what the drive side looks like:






The spring wrapped around the shift rod slot end looks like I think it is supposed to according to pictures from a transmission thread here last summer.
I don't have a good picture of it yet...I just wanted to check the drive side out and clean the transmission case and try to get it to shift...then I will be ready to button it back up and move on to the ignition and carburation issues, then try to start it.

And I found the kill switch.

That will be next...:>

I found the missing kill switch. I told earlier how there was no kill switch and concerned commentors rightly nagged me to have a working kill switch.

Problem solved.

....

In this picture I saw that little black/green mark....'hey wait a minute' (Homer emoticon here)



So...there's the kill switch, simply push on the tank with your left knee, simple huh?

________________

I have mentioned before this bike seems like a good old horse.
So think about it..that ignition short happened long enough to heat and melt the plastic and moisture got in there later...and well..it had to have run with that short long enough to produce enough heat to melt it...and still keep running. That's my story and i'm sticking to it :>

'it was running when it was stopped.'

My friend the PO just stalled it to shut it off...

Aha, here's the previous transmission thread with an excellent picture of what's behind the clutch..altho mine's an 86 400 and the picture subject is an 82 430 WR...so maybe small differences I don't know about.

http://www.cafehusky.com/threads/trans-problems.80421/#post-532875

If you were talking about the gray substance on the inside of the cover around the back of the impeller bearing , that is likely JB Weld which is actually an epoxy like substance. You would need to grind that out with a rotary hand grinder but I would not do that. If is is JB then it is likely sealing some previous damage you can not see.

dont all the covers have that there? i have one i know that was factory in the crate that way.

your waterpump area looks great, just needs a new oring so you can get rid of the gasket sealer someone put on there.

as for the gear that resides behind the clutch basket stack, that is the kick idler. you are correct in that it
is part of the starting system. it should be fairly tight. the bearing should be replaced as preventative..same as the kickshaft bearing...replace as preventative. unless you like wrecking expensive stuff..
the shift shaft should be pretty free. take the shifter bolt completely out, slide the shifter off and see if the orings are damaged or the shaft is rusty. thats likely why it isnt shifting. dont mess the spring.

Heaps of conversations about various decompressors here on this forum just use search function in upper right hand corner.

Jimspac...sorry I wasn't clear, the grey stuff is a soft deposit, pretty stable on the bottom of the trans and clutch area, not solid, not JB weld, but thanks for the suggestion..I see no evidence of any damage or repairs done in there. Yet.
The only reason to muck it out is that it may be metallic and it may be holding some metal chunks, should any be in there..altho as yet it all looks metal chunk free. Eventual disassembly will get the rest but for now I am just trying to evaluate it and get it running to evaluate it.

Justintendo...the idler is just able to rotate and feel loose, but it's firmly attached on the shaft..what I feel is rotational movement, and a bit of in and out play, but the bearings themselves all feel very solid, no play in any of the bearings I can feel in there so far...just the previously mentioned .010" clutch runout and gear lash.

As this is still all exploratory, so far see nothing expensive to worry about, short term, and unless someone has any concerns I/we haven't yet noticed I am going to continue...cleaning the shift lever and freeing it, horking around to loosen the grey sludge deposit, more trans cleaning and flushing, then button it back up and verify proper shifting...then on to carburation, ignition and maybe running.

Sparky still stuck, grrr...more heat! Maybe it will spark to verify running condition..maybe not, haha. We'll see...

The clutch is now loose, I pried the plates apart and washed them. I see no brokens bits or cracks except for the water pump housing shown above and the frozen shift lever.

None of that prevents me from continuing on to attempted starting, so I will finish cleaning and put the left side back together, with the shifter working well.
.................................

Electric coming up, getting the right connection for a proper kill switch is on the agenda, I have to clean and tease out the wiring bundle.

The ignition in the Motoplat mini6.

I felt no bearing play at that end either.

Tomorrow I will measure the clutch thickness and compare to the owner's manual.

??...Can I shift the transmission using the slot end that I see next to the clutch or do I need to put the cover back on?...we'll see, it was too floppy to get it to shift without the case and lever inj place....so unless someone says I should be able to shift it that way , no cover, (and therefore I have some problem)..I'll put the cover back on after flushing, cleaning, etc.

Thanks.

Onward and upward.

sounds like good progress...

Justintendo, thanks, so far so good, thanks for hanging in there... BUT...(I just asked this in the transmission thread as well..)

I have the cover off, I flushed and scrubbed and winkled about and am now pretty much sludge free.

No chunks of any metal came out, just the grey brown deposits..now mostly out as far as I can tell.

Problem?..I cannot shift it using the slot end seen at the bottom right of the clutch...it rotates forward/CCW about 30-40 degrees and stops, it rotates back/CW not at all, it won't shift.

I have rotated the engine by hand, the rear wheel by hand...no shifting.

Should I be able to shift it this way?

That little bolt halfway up the right hand side of the cylinder is factory and is a coolant bleed/drain.

with the cover off, you should be able to easily move the gear lever in the case. if this is frozen, that's your problem. you will have to remove the gear lever and get the shaft out of the case and clean it all up, new o rings and some grease. if the shifter is moving easily then you have an internal gearbox issue and may need to remove the clutch to see the rest of the shifting mechanism. nice pics, enjoying the read!

Ahh, thanks, yes, cleaning up the shift lever with some Unstick and a can of vintage elbow grease.

Taking the clutch apart in a few minutes and pikkies to follow..the 'trans problem' thread has a good picture on page one of the thread.

I'll post pictures...

This evaluation on an unknown (to me but I am learning quickly) bike is interesting..if not for youall's good advices it would be like taking a new path thru the woods to Grandmother's house wondering what scary evil plan the Big Bad Wolf has for me. I hope the transmission is not It.

Pikkies of the clutch removal tonite.....

Intermission: As a husky Noob, and a Certified Bodger..while this is all elementary to many here, I have seen others asking about and looking for answers to some of these same problems...so I am trying to do it an admittedly tedious step by step, the goal to determine if this bike is right for me to keep as usable or is it too expensive and therefore sell it on.

Well, I have fallen in Love. the quality and features are such a revelation compared to earlier Japanese and brit bikes I have struggled with..I am keeping it.

So....

.......................

Transmission problems, continued..
Can't try to start it yet as the transmission won't shift.
The clutch plates were stuck, and have been soaking in PB Blaster. I loosened them a little bit poking thru the oil-in access port, but basically that just paired them up, an innie and and outie each, so, still stuck.

As the transmission would still not shift, I couldn't get any torque on the plates so I removed the case to see what's what. The water pump seems perfect as written about previously.

So I took the case off and flushed and cleaned as described earlier.
.........

Clutch removal:
Here's what I found when the case came off. (also shown above), also shown in a better picture in 'trans problems' page 1
http://www.cafehusky.com/threads/trans-problems.80421/

but here is mine:




(The strange color at the right is not rust (yay!) but light from a flashlight, the shifter's slotted axle was in shadow.)

I could not shift using the slotted shift shown, or of course when the cover was on, the still (barely) moving but ineffective shift lever.

I removed the 5 bolts and pulled off the clutch hub with the plates as one chunk, but first I scored a small notch to get the plates back in the same slots. There are little scratches in the clutch basket where these tabs will go back in...and wow, that is some really hard steel, the machinist file hardly scratched it!



This marking allows the plates to go back in the same slots they have bedded into..in other words the slight mfg variations in the tabs and slots give slightly high spots so that some tabs were under the highest load and stick, cutting thru the oil perhaps, until they wore in, then all clutch plate tabs (more) equally share the load with the other plates.
If I reinstall them into different slots and they have to wear in all over again..meantime stickier movement, more debris...perhaps producing the greyish paste I found on the trans floor, all over again.
The clutch plate tab wear can also produce burrs and sticky movement. These Husky items however are so precisely made it may be a small problem. This is basic/habit of mine may be a relic because back 'in the day' on Brit bikes I would find plates that had razor sharp 1/8th" burrs and deep grooves that caused trouble in the smoothness of the clutch plates movement as well as metallic debris in the transmission oil. The steel used at that time was no where near as precision or of a hardness as the Husky parts I have seen in this transmission and driveline.
Yeah yeah, I know, you've heard it all before...haha, what, you gonna watch TV?

But,...sadly, out of practice I am and too eager so I screwed up a little, I could have taken the clutch off in one piece including the clutch basket/primary gear/clutch plate set in one compact chunk but instead I took the cover off with the five screws..and promptly dropped the cylindrical spacers from behind the springs so will have to redo the adjustment to the spring bolts again....the cylinders may be all exactly the same length and it won't matter and there will be no runout in the clutch...or maybe I'll have to tinker with it...we'll see.
Then I took out the cover with the clutch plate sets...still glued together in 2' and 3's.

Clutch hub cover and all the plates:




Then I pulled off the center clutch hub, then the outer basket/primary gear.
There is a washer hiding between the hub and the basket, don't lose it.
I also took out the clutch actuator rod and photoed it...no rust anywhere, including the one gear I can see thru the inner case wall thru the hole.




So, this is how experience is gained, doing dumbass stuff. The spring cylinders dropping out, the inner basket with all the plates separate from the clutch basket means I forgot and I can't now (maybe) get the metal driven plates back into the to clutch hubs slots they were in so...oops.
However, I still have to separate the stuck plates so I would have probably screwed that up anyway. Oh well.

So, next time:
*5 bolts cover off, don't drop the cylinders
*remove the Jesus clip+ from the end of the driven shaft
*put the cover back on and remove the entire clutch as a unit
*don't drop the shim washer behind the clutch basket if you do what I did and take the basket off and leave the hub/primary gear behind, haha.

( + 'Jesus clip': with apologies to the religious, when one tries to remove a split ring it is often followed by a blasphemic oath when it springs away across the shop.)

Anyway, I have to work next separate the plates and will try to index the plates back to their original grooves..but whatever ...:>

On to the shift mechanism itself, found behind the clutch...

Transmission shift problems...continued:

Here's what it looks like now with the clutch removed.

The needle clutch bearing can be seen, the idler is exposed, the indexing hooks and the Y shaped lever and detent sprung can be seen...and all look intact. The crossed spring on the slotted end shift axle at the right looks correct..in the 'trans problem' thread I have referenced before, that spring had come undone for someone. oops! too dark to see it in this picture..next post will have better pictures of it.



Now what!?... it still won't shift using vise grips/mole grips on the slotted shifter axle...the round shift drum end seen at the bottom would not rotate and the Y-piece wouldn't move.



The Y-piece didn't look real rusty, maybe a little, but it was frozen..I PB Blasted it and moved it and it loosened right up.
Now for the drum, also stuck...I used a 10mm socket and lucky me, the bolt didn't shear or unscrew...and the drum finally loosened up and started to work.

Gearshift attained mate! Yay!

It's pretty cool, the shift lever fits the slot that cranks the double hook at the bottom which rotates the shifter drum inside the transmission. The double hooks engage the pins in the shift drum end part that is visible.
When it turns, the Y piece drops into the space between the pins and locks it. The shift drum is inside and shoves the gears back and forth with pins riding in grooves, etc etc see the parts book, (I can't see it, my old computer freezes on the pdfs, grrrr!)
There is a ball or/and a detent inside that locks the drum at neutral between first and second. After several trips up and down thru the gears it got easier. When the shift lever is freed up it should now be able to shift this, no problem.

6 speeds How cool is THAT!!!???

The orange knife points at the Y piece notched in between the pins on the drum end when it's in gear, like this:



When it is in neutral the Y-piece is on top of the pins, and there is a definite click inside the trans when the neutral position is reached:



You can see the vise/mole grips at the right side there turning the slotted axle that cranks the double hook and operates the shift drum inside.

Pardon me if (I don't use the same terms as the pdf parts book I can't see..apologies for any errors, but remember it is probably good for you to catch and correct any of my mistakes, and please do!...heh...

Next, jabber and pikkies of the slotted shifter axle and double hooked crank, as that caused a problem for some in the 'trans problem' thread.