rxrider's Turbo Garage - pics back, will continue

[kinger]

Wow on the mounting holes cracking!!! I'll double check mine.

 

[rxrider]

It's only cracking on the outside frame, remember there are two layers of aluminum in this part of the frame and then the 3 millimeter steel reinforcement plate. I will have the cracks welded, I may also make an reinforcement plate to go on the outside... won't work, there is not enough room for a plate because the washer is almost down on the running boards already ...hmmm... I'll figure out something.

 

[rxrider]

UPDATE August 3. - Tear down nearly finished, part 3. Chaincase and drive shaft removal.


Again I was kinda optimistic on my estimates on when the tear down would be finisihed. I still need another evening to get there. Today I documented the removal of the chaincase and driveshaft in detail, both in words and pics.


Here's todays work.

I finished the removal of the upper heat shield and flex pipes. The insulation material on the heat shield was junk and I ripped it off.

HOW TO - CHAINCASE AND DRIVESHAFT REMOVAL


On the left side of the drive shaft, remove the 2 - two - T20 torx set screws.

Loosen the bolt holding the splined wheel for the speedo on the left end of the drive shaft, and remove it.

Remove all bolts holding the speedo pickup and the bearing cup plate.

Remove the plate and take out the bearing.

Now on to the right hand side of the sled for the chaincase removal.

First remove the circlip holding the brake disc in place.

Loosen the two bolts holding the brake caliper in place. And remove the brake caliper. I do not have the parking brake installed anymore, for those who have it, loosen the two allen bolts holding the parking brake caliper in place and lift if out of the way.

Remove the brake disc.

There's a sliding key on the jack shaft holding the brake disc in position, remove it.

Next is to remove the small 10 mm bolt on the chain case lid.
OBS! This bolt is very often overseen and forgotten with a damaged lid as the result.

Continue with the removal of the T20 torx set screw holding the collar on the jackshaft in place.

Remove the collar.

Now it's time to disconnect the reverse gear leaver. With the reverse lever in the forward position, loosen the two nuts and the bolt in the next pics.

Remove the bolt and nuts and take off the reverse lever from the chaincase.

Remove the dipstick to avoid vacuum when removing the chaincase lid.

Remove the 5 bolts holding the chaincase lid in place, 2 large bolts and 3 smaller bolts.

Place a bucket or similar underneat the chaincase to catch the oil spill from the chaincase when opening the lid.

Unhook the coolant hose from the holder and push it to the left and out of the way while pulling the lid by holding both at the top and at the bottom of the lid, pull gently. The goes the oil, did you remember to put the bucket underneat When the lid has come enough out for the shift fork to clear the reverse gear, rotate the bottom of the lid to the right so that the reverse mechanism clears the coolant hose, like shown in the next pic.

Remove the lid.

Next is the removal of the bolt and nut holding the drive and driven sprockets in place.

First loosen the bolt holding the driven gear in place a little so it is easy to turn, but do not remove it yet. It's easier to loosen the drive sprocket nut with help of the resistance from the track.

Loosen the nut holding the drive sprocket in place. I use a large 36 mm spanner wrench, but a socket wrench will just as fine.

I also use a hammer or similar to slam it hard a couple of times to loosen the nut, way easier than muscle away with your bare hands.

Now remove the bolt holding the driven sprocket in place, also remove the collar, sping and the reverse gear.

To be able to remove the chain and sprockets you first have to loosen the chain tensioner. Loosen the bolt until the tensioner inside the chaincase is no longer pressing on the chain.

Remove the splined journal.

Remove the reverse drive sprocket. Pay attention to the small pen type spring between the reverse drive sprocket and the reverse pinion gear.

Now it's time to pull out the chain, drive sprocket, driven sprocket and the reverse pinion gear. First pull with one hand on the drive gear and the other on the driven gear, pull out enough for the chain to clear the chaincase housing. Remove the reverse pinion gear. Lift out the chain and the remaining gears in one take.

Remove the jackshaft collar.

Remove the drive shaft collar.

OBS. Pay attention to how the drive shaft collar is installed. It can be installed both ways, but installed the wrong way it can cause serious damage to your chaincase.

Remove the gasket and clean it well before putting it away. Much easier to clean when still wet from the oil. If left for a month the dirt on it will stick to the gasket as the oil evaporates and dries out.

Loosen the three remaining bolts holding the chaincase to the frame and remove the chaincase.

If you forgot to remove the bearing on the left hand side of the drive shaft, now it's time to do so.

Pull the drive shaft to the right like shown in the pic below

On the left hand side of the sled push the drive shaft to the right and drop down the left hand side of the drive shaft inside the tunnel and pull the shaft out. Remove the track while at it.

Chaincase and drive shaft removal, done.


Here's some other stuff I did work on today. The Bombardier 9T sprockets are in very good shape after a season of hard use, much better quality than the WhalBros I had in there earlier.

I also removed the tunnel protectors to be able to remove the MCX charge tube (pre-cooler). What a f... PITA to remove them ouch, I will not install them back in the sled because I do not intend to run studs on the turbo sled anymore. I've had my share of damaged charge tubes, exhaust pipes and heat exchangers. I'm done running studs on my turbo sled.

With all parts out of the way I had to check how my new header would look like when installed. Very trick part Kevin aka Need for Speed 2 have built for me, thank you Kevin

The header did not go into place right away. I have to file down the bulkhead at the #2 stock exhaust outlet hole to make the header slide into place. But MAN is it nice looking in the sled

Have to figure out if the heat shield underneat the flex pipes should stay or go.

I still have to remove the front A-arms and steering parts before the tear down is complete.

 

[obr]

DAMNIT why could'nt you have posted pics of the chaincase and driveshaft removal a week ago? Would have saved me half an hour just to know about the torx screw on the inside on the driveshaft!!!

Your sled will be the one to beat this winter on the lakes for sure... Those parts looks REALLY good...

The cracking frame is actually kinda disturbing...even though theere is another plate on the inside, I don't like the fack that it flex so much that it cracks...might have to look into that BEFORE I install mine...

If everybody was as active taking pictures as you, we'd have a better world...Have you bought the magazine yet?

 

[rxrider]

Hahaha - because I was lazy and shot very few pics when I took the chaincase apart last year. It's difficult to write a detailed instruction without a lot of pics to use as a guideline for the writing. Hahaha because I did the work last night, not a week ago But now I have made up for my lazyness last year.

Thanks for the head up on my photographing.

No, I have not bought it yet, I better get hold of a copy the ScooterNorge sled magazine soon.

 

[rxrider]

UPDATE August 4. - Changing loose rivets.


Today I spent a few hours changing rivets throughout the frame. No pics taken, changing rivets are boring and do not need any explanation or pics.

It's nice to have the hard work done, only 2 rivets left to replace, holes have become too large to use 4.8 or 5.0 millimeter rivet, have drilled up the holes to next rivet size. Gotta get hold of a few 6 millimeter rivets.

 

[obr]

haha....well, your post are the best for us that just started building these old irons...I know the Apex pretty much in and out, and soon I'll probably know the Nytro too..and off course the RX-1...I don't think I even WANT to know the phazer though...I'm not sure I even had the hood of mine the whole season I had it...LOL...

You should buy the Magazine...the editor called me today asking how you liked the writeup...they did one mistake, you'll see it when you read it...he even asked if you got more stuff..and with all you pics, we could make a big project on your sled...and with all the turbos we got around us now, we could make some big turbo writeup...just thinking out loud....

Anyway, you need to start gettin the turbokit back together...I really appreciate more people over here going to Powderlites...

 

[rxrider]

Thanks for the acknowledment Ole

Lets do a writeup on all our three sleds, my friend Odd Steffen is going Powder Lites Hybrid on his sled as well.

Scope:
Old school '03 RX-1 Powder Lites Hybrid turbo system.
Middle aged '06 Attak Powder Lites Hybrid turbo system.
New school '08 FX Nytro Powder Lites Turbo system.

Lets make a writeup up on all out sleds under the same story where we show our respective turbo systems and how it's put together, what we had before and what we have now, and a little something on why we did go with what we have now. We'll then add pics of all our sled together taken at a photo shoot to go with the story. The theme for the story will have to be something like; Turbo guys goes Powder Lites.

Just thinking out loud, whatdayathink?

 

[obr]

DONE!!! And, if you continue to take as good pics of it all, I'm sure we can fill as many pages of the magazine as we want...anybody said turbo- edition? Let's do it!!!

 

[rxrider]

I'm in!!!!!!!

 

[rxrider]

UPDATE August 5. - Fitting the turbo header into the RX-1. Removing A-arms.


My friend Mikkel came over to the Turbo Garage this afternoon and helped me getting started fitting the header to my sled. Remember, parts were designed for an Apex so a little modification was expected to fit the header into my RX-1.

We had to file off a little at the #2 exhaust outlet hole in the bulkhead frame to be able to slide the header into place.

With the filing done the header slipped down into place. Now we found that it touched the stock heat shield underneat the header. Out came the chisel and I cut the rivets and removed the heat shield. We made a few modifications to the heat shield and put it back in.

The header cleared the heatshield and sunk further into place. We noticed that the header pipes close to the header top flange, where the turbo attaches, were in contact with the crossbar on the deltabox frame.

We made marks on where the crossbar needs to be cut and removed the parts getting ready to cut.

When cutting of the deltabox crossbar was done, some minor adjustments had to be done to make it fit perfectly.

The crossbar may have to be reinforced. Will get back to that later on.


This is how it looks like with the cutting and grinding finished. The header is bolted on by 3 bolts to check that everything fits.

When done fitting the header, I also changed out a few more loose rivets I discovered on the frame.


Time to start removing the A-arms. I removed everything in the way down in front of the enging and loosened the bolts and nuts holding the A-arms in place. The right hand side A-arms were bent from an impact with a rock while climbing a mountain late last season. The bent A-arms shown in the pic below.

This made removal of the RH side A-arms a PITA but with a little hammer persuation the bolts and tubes came off. I had some slight problems on the LH side as well but it came off a lot easier than the RH side. The bulkhead bushings on the LH side was like new, the RH side was worn and had some slop in them. Remember the bushings have encountered a crash where both A-arms were severely bent - the RH side bulkhead bushings need replacement. Bushings in the old A-arms are shot, all of them.


I took off the sway bar linkage from the old A-arms and installed them in the '05 A-arms.

The old A-arms removed from the sled.

I will also replace all balljoints in the steering system to take out the slop that have been developing over the years.

 

[obr]

Starting to look good Jan-Ove. I wonder how much the header will move. Looks to me like you might need just a little bit more room for it, but who am I to tell...

Didn't look like it was as much cutting in the frame as we first thought when we saw the pics?

How will the downpipe fit? Tried looking at it yet? Probably kinda hard until you get the turbo? Will for sure loose some lag with that setup compared to the rear mount it started out as...

 

[rxrider]

I believe that most of the movement will be backwards, giving it throttle will pull the engine slightly backwards. I'm also thinking of making some reinforcement for the crossbar. I will then cut off some from the crossbar to make more room around the header.

No, there were actuall no cutting needed in the bulkhead frame. I only had to file off a millimeter or so to slide the header into place.

Yeah I have been looking at it, but it's hard to tell. I would have to cut out a piece right down behind the header flange, 2" x 3.5" plus a little more to allow for movement. Yeah it's impossible to measure up anything without the turbo in place.

I hope to see quite an improvement in response, the more effective design should also give me more power with less boost compared to the rearmount system I had.

Can't wait to see the results from the system I'm building, I'll keep my fingers crossed that it will work just great, I bet it will (only 2 cents tho)

 

[kinger]

Looks great, good to know what needs to happen to make a apex header work on RX. I would cut that frame completly off after you boxed around the header towards the front. Add gussets on each side of it. If you do nothing that looks like it will fail, that part takes a lot of stress from the handlbars and the rider hanging on for dear life

 

[Need for Speed 2]

That looks great so far Jan-Ove, but remember you have to have fun while doing projects or it just becomes a job. HaHa keep up the good work.