Spline REPLACEMENT Time (high res pics added)

[boxermania]

Dr. Strangelove

It would be prudent to inspect the clutch splines specially if you are planning an 8K to 9K mile trip....not much fun if the splines were to rear up and bite you......

[iowabeakster]

AndyRR,

First of all, BRAVO! The splines on the clutch look like they destined for failure, in very short order. Way to save yourself the additional hassle (and money) of being stranded. If it happened far from home...well I'm just glad to see that it didn't happen far from home.

I really hope people take the lesson from your posting.


Senseless ranting...

Those splines DO NEED a regular inspection and lubrication. Save yourself time, money and aggravation...DO IT! Shame on BMW for leaving that item off the "maintenance schedule". It's a big hassle. It's expensive to have a shop do it. But replacing the clutch is not that bad, compared to replacing the clutch AND input shaft. Ignoring it just compounds the cost and potential problems. I am so angry that BMW recommeds ignoring it.

Ignorant speculation...

If this is done earlier (say at 24K or so), the input shaft on the tranny may have been worn much less. I'm not saying this to make Andy feel bad...just my own hint to others with fewer miles.

[AndyRR]

The input shaft is out.


I was hoping to get the components off the old shaft and onto the new but I am going to need a bearing separator. I was hoping I could use the standard 2 jaw puller I already have, but there just isn't room to get the jaws in there. I need one of these:



I'm taking it to a friend that has one tomorrow. If his doesn't work, McMaster Carr has one that should do the trick for $31. So far, a bearing separator, a 12mm 1/2" drive allen, and a temperature probe are the three tools needed that may not be in a typical toolbox.

It took forever to get the three shafts out of the transmission housing. The manual says that the housing needs to be heated to around 200f. It was 40 degrees in my garage and the large housing sheds heat quickly. Two of the three shafts are in blind holes and they all need to come out together. I had to hold the gear assemblies up with one hand and beat the housing downward with a dead blow hammer with the other, all the while avoiding hitting the mating surface of the case and working quickly before it cools off again. This would have been good time to have a helper.

I did get a chance to measure the rotational freeplay of the worn splines. Approx 5.1 degrees. The approx diameter of the flywheel is 240mm. I've been trying to think how to make this useful and have a couple ideas I will try out once I get things back together. It might be as simple as measuring how far the bike will roll with the engine off and in gear. I wish I took some measurements before I took it apart, but I was thinking positive at the time. Hopefully, with the collective wisdom here, we can figure out a good way to check the health of the splines without removing the transmission.

[CycleRob]

AndyRR,
You're going to need a fairly large press to compress the damper spring assembly so you can release the snapring that holds it together. Then there's the reassembly . . .

Heating the tranny up from 40F is a real chore, unless you use 2 heatguns simultaneously. This transmission is the first one that I think would be truly annoying to work on. Trying to get it apart being the biggest PITA. The easy tranny's are those where the cases split horizontally thru both shafts centers. No heat guns are needed for that type. They are also easier to test shift to see that the depth of dog engagement is equal to both "in gear" directions, confirming the shift forks are not bent. With vertical split cases, like our 50R has, it's more difficult to do that or to check/confirm the shaft end play.

[awagnon]

Andy, I agree with a previous post that your splines will continue to wear out, regardless of how often you lube them. You have a misalignment and the wear will continue until it's corrected. Which isn't easy.

I looked at the splines on my RT at 43,000 miles, mainly just to lube them. They were in worse shape than yours. They clearly would have completely failed on my next trip. I didn't have the tools or knowledge to check for misalignment, so I just replaced the clutch plate, tranny input shaft, main input shaft bearing, and all tranny seals. I lubed the new splines very well with Honda Moly-60. That was 10,000 miles ago. I just pulled the tranny, and the splines are dry again and showing significant wear. I suspect they will fail again after the next 30,000 miles. I've looked at repairing the misalignment, but have decided to just re-lube the splines, ride it about 10,000 more miles and then trade it in on something without a shaft. It may not be a BMW.

Some, with more experience, recommend replacing the entire clutch assembly ( housing, etc.) if you don't check for misalignment. I guess the assumption is that MAYBE the clutch housing is the cause. Probably isn't, but may be worth considering if you plan to keep the bike.

[AndyRR]

I've been giving a lot of thought to how to correct the problem. The first thing for sure will be to get rid of the two alignment dowels. The are holding the cases in mis-alignment. What comes next I haven't decided. One option would be to drill out the mounting holes on the trans case so they are slightly oversize, bolt the transmission to the case loosely, turn the motor (or better yet, run it) and let it find it's own center. While the motor is turning, gradually tighten the mounting bolts until they are all tight. Shut it down then re-install each bolt one at a time with medium strength loc-tite. At that point I could optionally install four roll-pin type dowels into holes that I pre-drilled into the top of the trans case and finished drilling into the engine case after the alignment is done. I'll try to add a picture of what I'm trying to describe later.

With the help of my friend and his ridiculously-large-for-this-job bearing separator I finally got the the components off the old shaft and onto the new.



With the bearing off, everything else came easy. I was a little concerned about the spring pack, but it came off as an assembly.



We used different sized deep sockets to hammer the bearings on by the inner race only. The finished product.



An interesting side note: I was expecting the bearing to all say "GERMANY" but none did. Two each from Japan, Poland, and England. Not saying there is really anything wrong here, just a little disappointing.

[awagnon]

An interesting side note: I was expecting the bearing to all say "GERMANY" but none did. Two each from Japan, Poland, and England. Not saying there is really anything wrong here, just a little disappointing.

Considering how well the Germans designed the splines, maybe not having any German gears is a good thing.

[snowprick]

FWIW

These are my splines at 29,000 kilometres

[Dr. Strangelove]

so...those look good, right?

[AndyRR]

Snowprick is gloating about his perfect looking splines. He has a keeper.

I was saying that I thought I had 4 good places to install new pins and I was only half right. 4 nice places on the transmission side, 0 good places on the engine side except the two that are already used. I may have to explore the offset dowels. I really feel the need to fix it now that the entire R1150R community knows my bike is scheisse and wouldn't pay me anything for it.

[snowprick]

Snowprick is gloating about his perfect looking splines. He has a keeper.

I was saying that I thought I had 4 good places to install new pins and I was only half right. 4 nice places on the transmission side, 0 good places on the engine side except the two that are already used. I may have to explore the offset dowels. I really feel the need to fix it now that the entire R1150R community knows my bike is scheisse and wouldn't pay me anything for it.

AndyRR

In actual fact my bike is low milage (18,000) and there is slight wear so after some more miles I may be in the same boat as you but that is some time away. Please note that I have recently replaced a Hall sensor, battery, rear shock and rear tyre. Now a clutch and seal change so I did not get off that lightly.

[OU812]

Looking through the thread I still have a hard time determining if it is the misalignment or lack of good heat treatment on the splines that causes the Premature wear/failure?

[Daryl_stamp]

I went through this issue w/ a colleagues (product engineer) the other day.
We use a splined shaft on our pump motors (4" submersible), so he's pretty familiar w/ what is & what is not good spline application;
- too soft
- wrong fit (mating pieces over or under sized)
- poor alignment
- not sized appropriate for application
- longitudinal contact (why wouldn't you design the shaft go all the way through the hub?)

I'd bet a dollar that the it's a combination of all them and that the failures are a result of all factors coming together in one production unit.
Nick this price here, save a Euro on this other one, deviate an off-spec part once in while, hold the 'suspect parts' for disposition (and then release them after approval, get a rash of assembly headaches when the run goes through). Some manufacturing environments have culture of 'keep making 'em, ... we made ___ units today" and some have a culture of "Stop..., let's make sure we know what's going on, ... scrap these components...we made no bad ____ today."

What is quality?

DLS

[snowprick]

I went through this issue w/ a colleagues (product engineer) the other day.
We use a splined shaft on our pump motors (4" submersible), so he's pretty familiar w/ what is & what is not good spline application;
- too soft
- wrong fit (mating pieces over or under sized)
- poor alignment
- not sized appropriate for application
- longitudinal contact (why wouldn't you design the shaft go all the way through the hub?)

I'd bet a dollar that the it's a combination of all them and that the failures are a result of all factors coming together in one production unit.
Nick this price here, save a Euro on this other one, deviate an off-spec part once in while, hold the 'suspect parts' for disposition (and then release them after approval, get a rash of assembly headaches when the run goes through). Some manufacturing environments have culture of 'keep making 'em, ... we made ___ units today" and some have a culture of "Stop..., let's make sure we know what's going on, ... scrap these components...we made no bad ____ today."

What is quality?

DLS

+1
I'd say that about sums it up.

[AndyRR]

The longitudinal shortcoming (this is not a Viagra add!) is compounding the problem and an inexcusable mistake, but is not the root problem IMO. Take a look at the back edge of the splines on Cyclerob's pic here: (I can't post his pic directly, but look at 18A)
http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r87/ ... be-18a.jpg

Although the wear is OK, the longitudinal shortcoming seems to be universal to the model (see Snowprick's pic above and add 33k miles). Solving that problem would double (my guess) the life of the unfortunate bike which also has misaligned splines.

Plenty of people far smarter than myself have tried to fix this problem. I was hoping that simple shade-tree ingenuity could find a solution. So far I have hit a wall. There is too little material to work with on the engine side. I would be tempted to take the "easy" way out and order the $370 engine side transmission case if I thought it would fix the problem. I will do my best to fix this problem within my ever-expanding budget for this repair. Although I love this bike, the easiest fix (and perhaps why no real fix has been found) is to sell the damn thing.

If "fixing" it in such a way that it will last 30 - 40 thousand miles is OK for BMW, than it should be OK for me to do so with a clean conscience....
Dammit.

[AndyRR]

"Stop..., let's make sure we know what's going on, ... scrap these components...we made no bad ____ today."

What is quality?

DLS

Well said. This is what I thought I was paying for with the flying prop. I won't make that mistake twice.

[AndyRR]

AndyRR

In actual fact my bike is low milage (18,000) and there is slight wear so after some more miles I may be in the same boat as you but that is some time away. Please note that I have recently replaced a Hall sensor, battery, rear shock and rear tyre. Now a clutch and seal change so I did not get off that lightly.

My bad. Your bike is also schiesse. Nice to have some company.




All in good fun. All I have left is to laugh at my stupid bike problems.

[AndyRR]

I had an idea for measuring the misalignment. You are looking at the inside of the tranny half that mounts to the engine. It is mounted to the engine with the input spline inserted all the way into the clutch. With no bearing, it is able to go to center. It was a little tricky to measure here, but I took measurements from all four sides of the input shaft to the bearing sleeve. The case needs to move to the left 0.6 mm and down 0.5mm. Assuming I can find offset dowels of the appropriate size, none of them are hollow. I would have to use only 4 bolts to attach the tranny to the engine. It might be worth a try. Tell me what you think.

[awagnon]

I had an idea for measuring the misalignment. You are looking at the inside of the tranny half that mounts to the engine. It is mounted to the engine with the input spline inserted all the way into the clutch. With no bearing, it is able to go to center. It was a little tricky to measure here, but I took measurements from all four sides of the input shaft to the bearing sleeve. The case needs to move to the left 0.6 mm and down 0.5mm. Assuming I can find offset dowels of the appropriate size, none of them are hollow. I would have to use only 4 bolts to attach the tranny to the engine. It might be worth a try. Tell me what you think.

Andy,

Have you looked at Terry's and some other threads on the BMW Sport Touring forum on how they measured misalignment. I don't believe it's as simple as you show. I have also tried to figure out a way to correct my misaligned transmission and talked with BMW mechanics. The problem with buying the front of a transmission, is that we don't know if the bad part if the front of the tranny or the back of the engine. I considered removing the locating dowels. Then "floating" the front part of the transmission until I had it centered with a micrometer. Then bolting it in place with the other non-dowel bolts. Once secured, boring out the locating pin holes to a slightly larger size and making new, non-offset, but larger dowels. The bore would have to extent all the way through the transmission flange, but you could secure the bolt with a thick washer. Just a thought.

[AndyRR]

I had read Terry's article thanks to oiasghar's earlier post on this thread. I didn't see any pics though and wasn't exactly sure what he was measuring. I just read it again and finally understand. He is using a fancier (and more accurate) way of measuring the same thing. He is measuring from the center line using a dial indicator mounted to a jig he made mounted to the crankshaft. I assumed that the input shaft is round (it is) and measured from the edge of that to the same bearing sleeve that he was measuring. I was using calipers, but did get good repeatability. His method removed the very real possibility that the clutch (my center reference) was slightly off center.
The thought occurred to me that I could take measurements of the bearing sleeve relative to the mounting holes on my transmission case and have Bob's order me another case. I could then take measurements of the replacement and decide if I truly want it. I would explain my intent before ordering.
If he lends you his setup post some pics of it please.