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Perhaps the retaining part of your spline broke away when you tried to remove the shaft to the alternator side.
Nah. It was like that when I opened up the clutch cover. Gear was hanging a few mm off the end of the shaft and touching the back of the clutch. May have been done by a previous owner trying to remove the shaft though.

Thanks for he Loctite numbers. Saves me having to look them up.
 
I've been thinking about the twist I found in my Z25 shaft, and how it could have got that way.

The initial problem with the Z25 setup was that the gears were made with not enough clearance (backlash) between them, so when things got hot, the clearance closed to create interference between the mating gears. Clearly, in that situation the gears would get very tight and be difficult to turn - hence the hot start issue.

Any such interference of meshing gear pairs will introduce radial forces on the gears, shafts and bearings. That could lead to the gears breaking or shaft bending like a banana (both of which have been seen) but not twisting. Evidently there is some other issue at play that's causing an excessive torsional load on the Z25 shaft.

The torsional load on the shaft under normal conditions comes from two sources: the load imposed by the alternator, and the torque from the starter motor when cranking the engine.

Given that the twist in the shaft is right-hand (like a right hand thread) and it's between the Z25 gear and the sprag clutch hub, then it's obviously due to some interaction between those two components. If the alternator was imposing sufficient load to twist the shaft, then the twist would be along the whole length of the shaft between the Z25 gear and the alternator coupling, and would be in a left hand direction. So that scenario is eliminated. Also, it would be difficult in he extreme to believe that a normally functioning alternator could impose such a load on its drive shaft.

OK, so something is going on when the starter is engaged. I very much doubt that the starter motor would have sufficient grunt to twist the shaft under normal starting conditions. However, if the engine backfires and suddenly rotates backwards, it could put a high shock load on the starting mechanism. Anyone who has had a big single kick back on the kick-starter will know what sort of shock loads I'm talking about.

Occasionally, when cranking my bike on the starter, it has come to an abrupt stop with a loud 'clack' noise. Presumably that's the engine kicking back against the starter. Such a sudden acceleration against the inertia of the starting gear would impose very high loads on the gear, shaft, sprag clutch and starter motor. It seems the weak link in that drive train is the Z25 shaft, The torsional strain exceeds its elastic limit, so the shaft ends up with a permanent twist. I suppose that could be described in engineering terms as a torsional displacement failure.

Eliminating the scenario in which engine kickback occurs would be a good thing for the longevity of the Z25 system. The liklihood of an engine kicking back during starting can be very much reduced or practically eliminated by retarding the ignition timing at cranking speed. When kick-starting an old bike with manual advance, you always set the ignition to full retard before jumping on the kick-starter.

So ...
When I get the bike back together, I want to look at the ignition timing advance map and edit it if possible to have bugger-all advance below about 500 rpm. I'm not yet familiar with Tune ECU software, so I'm hoping there's a way to do that.
 
Cam, you are correct in most of what you say however, my shaft broke between the alt coupling and the sprag clutch. So the only torsional load must have come from the alternator, either due to acceleration or kick back when shutting engine down or like you mention the occasional kick back upon starting. I also repaired a twisted shaft in a TNT from Smithton but cant recall where the twist was. Think I have that shaft around somewhere, will check. Cheers, Nigel.
 
Cam, you mentioned that you might test the hardness of the old and new shafts. If you didn't want to subject the new one to the test I could send you one of mine, or get it tested here. I wouldn't mind betting that the local trade training school would have something to do the trick. We'd just have to make sure we used the same test.
I also wouldn't mind betting that your old twisted shaft is not as hard as it should be. The twist it has is far more than I've seen or heard of before.
 
OK, on the hardness issue: I tried a rough home-workshop hardness test on the new and old shafts.

Using an automatic spring-loaded centre punch (for repeatability of punch impact), I had a go at the cut surface where I chopped the old shaft with the angle grinder. It made a nice little conical divot. Then I tried it on the un-cut end of the shaft. It made no indentation. All it did was blunt the tip of the centre punch.

I also tried it on one of the spline ridges, as well as a couple of spots on the new shaft, with the same result each time - no dint in the shaft, just a blunt punch. I got sick of re-sharpening it each time so gave up.

So it's obvious that the shaft is surface hardened in some way.

The new shaft may have a harder core than the old one, but the only way to test it would be to cut it in half to expose the core. I'm a little reluctant to do that, so I won't pursue the issue any further. But if someone else wants to destructively test a new shaft, I'm happy to donate my old shaft to compare it with.

Without any further enlightenment on the relative strengths of the old and new shafts, the safe assumption is to consider the new shaft to be the same kind of steel as the old one. That means it could end up tying itself in knots again if I can't eliminate the shock loading that the old shaft endured.
 
Well ... Checked my bike over yesterday before doing another service .
I wanted to inspect the clutch bearings and z25 gear and shaft for wear , low and behold my z25 shaft had a slight bend in it too . The bolt had come loose at some point after my trip to Germany in June this year ! ..
Ah well parts in stock ordered and from Alex ( maniac) .
No damage other than slight polishing of z25 gear .

One thought occurred to me about the bolts backing off from the shaft even when locking compound applied is why on earth can't the bolt heads be deeper so if the do back out they'll have nowhere to go thus keeping all the parts in a safe place ? .....
I know it's not an ideal situation but it's better than the shaft chewing up the clutch drive gear .
 
why on earth can't the bolt heads be deeper so if the do back out they'll have nowhere to go thus keeping all the parts in a safe place ? .....
They can be. For some strange reason Benelli like to reduce the head height even though there is plenty of room for the standard head, well, on all the one's I've changed there is. I always check though.
 
One thought occurred to me about the bolts backing off from the shaft even when locking compound applied is why on earth can't the bolt heads be deeper so if the do back out they'll have nowhere to go thus keeping all the parts in a safe place ? .....
I know it's not an ideal situation but it's better than the shaft chewing up the clutch drive gear .[/QUOTE]


That wouldn't work as if the bolt tries to come undone the Z25 shaft would simply move towards the clutch gear. I believe the reason the bolt comes loose is there is too much clearance in the splines between shaft and clutch hub. The bolt is trying to hold the complete assembly together as well as preventing the movement in the splines. Nigel.
 
Did you find what stops the alternator side bearing moving inwards?
Yes. As expected, there's an internal shoulder in the bore. If you need to replace the bearing it's a 6005/C3 (25x47x12).

There's enough room behind the alternator coupling for a bearing retainer so I'll be able to fix my circlip cock-up. I'll still use some Loctite bearing gap filler though, because the bearing is a bit looser in its bore than I'd like it to be. I reckon the housing took a pounding from the bent shaft.

BTW, that beat-up looking thing in the middle isn't part of the bike. It's just the drift that I knocked the shaft out with. It's there to stop the sprag clutch falling down into the gearbox.
 

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G'day folks - the continuing Z25 saga ...

Got a chance to do some work on the bike this afternoon. So I installed the new Z25 shaft.

If you recall, I buggered the groove for the circlip that retains the ball bearing on the alternator side (left side of case). So I invented a new type of bearing retainer. Basically an alloy ring with a spigot that projects into the bearing hole to hold it in place. Driled and tapped 6 holes in the case to fix the ring in place with 6 x M3 socket head countersunk machine screws. Fortunately there's enough room behind the alternator coupling for the 2mm thick flange. Drilling and tapping such tiny holes was like working on a bloody watch.

I've attached some pictures. The double centre punch mark on the outside of the bearing retainer is to indicate the orientation. The mark goes to the top. I did that because I'm not 100% confident that the 6 screw holes are evenly spaced. I did my best to get them as accurate as I could, but without a fancy rotary table for my pillar drill I have to assume there's some minor variation.

The masking tape in the bottom of the coupling housing was to prevent the little screws from falling through the oil drain holes if I dropped one.

Almost ready to go back on the road. Just got a bit more reassembly to do, new oil and coolant. Bodywork and tank yet to go back on. Ran out of time today.

Cheers,
Cam
 

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Well got mine apart today and guess what......... no step on the inside to stop the bearing moving in the clutch direction. There is no damage to the clutch or z25 gear just polishing on the edge. But mine is an tre899k so would it be the same?. Anyway it’s making me nervous( and I’m a fairly nervous sort of guy anyway).
 
I'm still a little confused by this Glynn .. are we talking about the bearing at the alternator side moving inwards towards the centre of the engine making the z25 gear nudge the clutch ? Eek .
Or am I way off the mark
 
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