Unbelievable. I was heading out Sunday and was maybe ten minutes from home. The clutch felt a little funny and I could hear some clanking from the primary every time I pulled the lever. I had just decided that I needed to turn around, and was approaching a traffic light in the left turn lane, which put me squarely in the middle of the road with two lanes of traffic on either side of me. Suddenly bam! a loud clank and my rear wheel locked up. Since I was approaching a stop light I was moving pretty slowly at that point, and somehow managed to stay upright and skid to a stop. Nobody was directly behind me, or right alongside me so I missed getting run over. I managed to quickly knock it out of gear and pushed the bike across two lanes and onto the shoulder. A good Samaritan stopped and helped me roll it out of the busy intersection and into a parking lot. AAA towed me to my local shop; the owner came down and opened it up to get the bike inside. So several miracles have already occurred. If I had been moving any faster when this happened, I probably would not be here typing this story right now.

This morning I stopped by the shop to see if he had opened it up yet and what he found, Here it is; a snapped transmission mainshaft! The weird feeling in the clutch and the clanking must have been the clutch basket flopping around as the shaft was coming apart. My indy was shocked; he had not seen this before. Anybody here familiar with this? Any ideas about fixing/upgrading this? It's an 89, with a tapered shaft. Is there any upgrade what will work with my existing inner primary? Options? Baker? Maybe now's the time to look at a Baker 6 speed. But this is already going to be big $ so I don't know.

 

Wow..glad you are safe. How does the inner side of the clutch hub look? Looks like it snapped right behind the key-way.

If the gears are good, why not get a new mainshaft? That would be the cheapest route. Lots of other options.

 

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say JB weld might not be the right fix here.


Glad you weren't hurt. I've done the Nantucket sleighride with a locked up rear wheel before. It isn't fun.


carl

 

You have the Hitachi starter or the older bendix?

 

It's the newer style that was common from 1990-on.

 

I would find a used gear set with the splined shaft. Should go right in your case. Get a the newer clutch and you'll have a beefier driveline. You gotta match the number of teeth on the clutch you have. Also can use the upgraded sprocket which is thicker. I did it on my 89 Softail.

 

The 90's clutch has more surface area then the 89's. Also the clutch can be no later than 93 so your primary gearing stays the same.

 

You do not need to make any changes to the inner or outer primary, starter etc, a splined mainshaft will fit fine with no mods there.

Several ways to go here :

Replace you mainshaft with another tapered mainshaft, cheapest way to go because you don`t need to replace the clutch, but that old clutch is a crappy design...

I can send you a used tapered manishaft if you decide to go that way...

I wouldn`t consider replacing just the mainshaft in your current gearset, you would need to use a 1990 mainshaft, it is a one year only design, and the only one that will work with the `89 and earlier gearset.

Find an entire gearset from `91 or later, the later the better.

If you use a `90-`93 clutch it will be plug and play, it will have the same size primary chain sprockets and the same size starter ring gear.

 

I'd be curious as to how you ride? Are you on the throttle a lot or just cruising around at the speed limit, that looks like a pretty thick piece of steel. Wondering how hat happened.

 

I'd like to know that too. It's a heavy touring bike, not a race bike and I ride accordingly. Yes, I do tend to exceed speed limits (who doesn't?), but that's because most of the two-lane blacktop that I ride on has a speed limit of only 40 or 45. On highways (which I avoid if possible) I stay in the 65 - 75 range. So I'm certainly not abusing my bike.