Is this to much

[Canam370]

What sort of isotrope do you need polished Firko?

[Montynut]

What flavour isopope do you need polished Firko?

 

[Nathan S]

Does anyone know of a company that does Isotropic polishing here in Oz?

http://www.bvproducts.com.au/superfinishing

http://xtremerotaries.com/service-pages/isotropic-superfinishing.htm

I've never used them, but they make a lot of very high-end products - real strawberries to swine stuff, really... [insert Maico joke here]

[FritzG]

The other day I was picking up some bling from my polisher and sitting on his bench was a Kawasaki 1000 transmission in pieces, all polished up and shiny as a new pin that he'd done for the bike shop next door to him for a historic superbike they're building for a customer. I might do a Maico trans myself and see what the difference is......

WARNING: THREAD DEVIATION.
Doug, as a separate issue, have you tried the coil spring conversion on a Maico clutch? I'm about to set up a magnum clutch for my 360 oval and want to try the Wheelsmith coil conversion I've had for yonks.

Hi Mark,

I tried the coil spring in my 74, 440 and didn't like it, started having strange clutch problems after install. If you think about how a coil spring is made it is going to compress unevenly due to the way the coils are ground and finished flat on both ends of the spring. The belville washers are going to compress straight and true. I went back with the standard set up and my clutch works fine. It has also been my experience that there are some poorly made made belville washers as well. I have pulled the clutches on Doug's (flying DG) Maico's and this is the guy to listen to.

Fritz

[flyingdg]

Fritz....I've been thinking about this washer verses spring setup for a while now and I would like to take a maico clutch to a guy I know that is one of the best spring designers in the US and have him look at the setup to see what he thinks. All the springs on the market are a copy of a copy and who knows if the first one was made correct. The guy that I'm talking about is the one that designed the new springs to fix the Hodaka shifting problem that no one could fix for the last 50 years. There has been a lot of spring kits made to fix the hodaka shifting but at best it was a band aid fix till now. That could be the same thing with the maico clutch spring. If he got them to work as good or better that the maico washers you would then have to overcome  all the negative feedback that is out there now on the coil spring just to sell them. DG

[KTM47]

I tried the so called wheelsmith spring on my 490. It didn't work properly. It was like the coils were binding up and running out of movement. I have also seen a post saying that when fitting the coil spring you should leave the locking plate out, just use locktite. That makes sense the extra 1.5 mm might just make a difference. I haven't tried it yet, but polishing everything does also seem like something worth considering.

[flyingdg]

I have some cut away clutch covers that I can put on the motors I'm working on just to see how the clutch is working. I will take all that down to him just so he can see what were up against. When you pull in the clutch that 1.5mm is about all the pin moves to disengage  the clutch. That would mean the spring was already coil binding. DG

[FritzG]

Modern clutches use the coil springs in sets of 5 or 6 so the coil problem is negated. If you look at the overall size of the Maico clutch compared to modern bikes it is very small and therefore has to be set up just right with good plates and springs. I have a bunch (over 100) Maico Belleville clutch washers, some are thinner than others, some have more "cup" than others. I think over the years as the springs have been reverse engineered they have been slightly incorrect on dimensions and/or heat treat.

It will be interesting to see what the spring guy has to say. Interesting though that KTM has gone to a Belleville style clutch spring?

Fritz

[flyingdg]

Fritz...he also makes Belleville type springs. So I think he can give us the pros and cons of what one to use. DG

[flyingdg]

I've been working with the spring company on the coil spring and I should have five sample springs done this week to do some testing with. I showed them some of the old coil spring I had, some new and some used and it looks like they where made from the wrong metal that can't take the heat of the clutch. They also think they weren't pre sacked. So that is probably why they work for a short time then start to slip. One more thing it's going to take three different springs for all the spring stack's that was run in the maico's. There would be one for the big clutch 20 springs single's ()()()() and then one for the AW 20 spring double stack (())(())(()) and the magnum 18 spring double stack. I'm only having them make the magnum spring as of now.