Shaft Seal

Changed out the shaft seal... it was a bit nerve racking but not hard work at all.

Bought the seal from Irv Seaver for a whopping $7 (their parts prices are competitive with the prices online).

With a friend's help, we put the bike at a 45 degree angle (leaning the engine case on an ATV dirt tire and rim), unscrewed the shift lever and pulled it from the engine case. The next step was to pull the old seal from the bike, this was slightly more challenging as it requires some finesse and a dull screwdriver to carefully pull the very tight seal from the tranny cover (Note: pay attention to the way the seal is seated and facing so you can put it back the same way). The third step was to take the new seal, give it a light coat of oil and begin to seat it into the cover again - this part sucks. You have to be very careful, even though the seal is pretty solid, you have to make sure you push it in slowly and evenly. You'll probably find, as I did, that the seal doesn't want to go in... I found that by using a rubber mallet and a long socket that was almost as wide as the seal was good to work the seal in... I was worried at first but as long as I worked around the edges I was good.

The challenge is knowing how deep the seal goes before it seats. If you stick your finger in there, there is a bearing (I think) that moves back and forth a bit. If you paid attention to this part before you took out the original seal you'll be able to know the placement of the seal (how deep it goes) when you seat the new one. I didn't do this step and had to guess. My Haynes manual was useless for this work and I wonder of the Clymer manual is better (I'll have to get one). After about 5 minutes of light tapping and pushing, the seal was seated correctly and I put everything back together.

Good times!! It was fun drinking a beer and turning wrenches and is always fun hanging out with a friend.