Nice work man! How'd u lower it down, Hydraulic table?

 

Bought a hydraulic ATV jack from Harbor Freight. Tricky part was that in order to get it high enough to reach the engine with the car in the air, I used a board and a couple of 2 x 4s along with some extensions that came with the jack. To be able to roll the engine out from under the car, I had to remove the extensions and board. So I raised up engine, supported it on a pair of 2 x 6s, removed the board and extensions, then lowered the engine and rolled it out.

Now I have a jack to work on the Harley.

 

Awesome work. What type of lift are you using? (Sorry for the drift!)

 

A friend lent me his Esko jack stands. I have to admit, they do give me a sense of stability over my standard jacks. I may have to break down and buy a set.

I used my car jack to lower the transmission at the same time, but it appears that I can balance the engine/trans on the atv jack. Shown here after pulling the jack away so I could park my wife's car in garage. In case yo have not seen it, this is an excellent writeup on Dropping the Engine:

http://www.pcarworkshop.com/index.ph...ing_the_engine




And here is the obligatory photo.

 

I spoke with James at Patrick Motorsports, and he suggested that the problem was most likely a differential failure. He asked me to turn the output shafts, and if the were clunky, then it was likely the spider gear bearings. Well, they were clunky, so I removed the differential, and low and behold, it was a mess! One of the needle bearings came apart.

After cleaning it out, I was able to shoot brake cleaner up the end of the shift rod bore. This in combination with moving the shift rod back and forth caused 2 more bearings and some other debris to come out. Now the shift rod moves freely.

I think I will be replacing the diff with a Wavetrac TBD.

 

Make sure you check the teeth on both the ring and pinion very carefully for damage... these are the last parts you want failing...

I would also suggest pulling of the end of the transmission case (shifter end) to make sure there has been no migration of debris through the rest of the transmission.

 

Thanks Steven. Will the removal of the front cover disrupt anything in the transmission?

Also, the ring is part of the differential, correct? Doesn't the new diff come with a new ring? Am I just looking for pitting?

 

The end cover can come off without any issue, you should replace the gasket when you put it back together (as well as the large o ring for the side cover).

You have to remove the ring gear from the old diff and put it on the new diff, you should also use new ring bolts in this process as the manual regards them as single use. You will need to shim the new diff when you put it in, this does require some special tools as well as a bunch of shims etc.

You should look for any marks, scratches, gouges etc. Unfortunately if there are these marks it is going to get expensive as you need to replace both the ring and pinion as they are matched at the factory.