TerraRoot

But first

Loncin 125 into a vintage 60’s honda 50.

Goes quite well actually, it’s made for the honda 50 ring of kerry challenge, more time would have seen a bigger carb installed for more speed but as it is now it’ll fly up the hills and pull wheelies everywhere.

Right to business, change the clutch springs for faster getaway from the lights.

side case popped off at a click of my fingers I’m so used to doing it, next I have to get the clutch off the rear assembly, no 45mm spanners or sockets to hand so I put it in a vice and used a strap wrench to open it, turned it the other way up and gently opened it the rest of the way because the contra spring will unload the clutch in your face if you aren’t paying attention.

That’s a long contra spring!

My choices from weakest to toughest, left to right, according to the little leaflet. Choose the green ones because they were impossibly tough compared to the original spring. Wrong choice, we shall explain later.

Ninja death star clutch?

With one spring finally on it looks as if the extra diameter of the spring is getting in the way, also it’s nearly impossible to get on.

As shown here, not shown is the other three hands holding the clutch the hammer and the camera (New phone btw nokia e52 recently made foss software, hoping for a half decent UI soon)

And the test drive showed: bugger all difference! well maybe I should have gone for a pre test spin to get a feel for what the old springs were like, which from memory were runner 125 springs.

okay heres the theory of why stiffer clutch spring don’t work:

the springs are meant to hold the clutch shoes in until a high speed is reached, but these bigger diameter springs actually (check the third pic up) rub off the side of the shoe and push the next clutch shoe out a little which in turn lightens the work of the next spring over, slightly dodgey theory I know, but just look as the leverage those shoes have over the springs, it’d break solid metal at a high rpm, stiffer springs will actually wear the shoes spring mount eye holes, there applying useless pressure, bit like american engneering cheap heavy and all the forces in the wrong place. A bandage masking the real problem, the shoes are too heavy!

So, my plan is to fit the standard springs again, then buy a analogue kitchen weighting scales, and take off weight from the shoes, no need for heavy springs, less wear, less forces going into the pegs holding the clutch shoes. Cons I’ll either have to do heavy maths to find the right weight to take off or I’ll have to take the clutch off many many many times and take a little off each time. If it all goes tits up a new racing clutch is quite cheap actually.

Spin tomorrow, I’ll see how she goes.

Tags: gilera runner 180, Homemade

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 18th, 2010 at 22:03 by TerraRoot Lande and is filed under Gilera Runner. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.