Removing the crankshaft

It's been a while since the last update since there wasn't too much progress before I got removing of the primary drive gear removed which I couldn't do myself. Well, now pretty much everything is apart.

gearbox main shaft

gearbox lay shaft and selector drum

The gearbox comes out in a few different pieces. Started by removing the fork guide shafts and once they are off the fork drum comes off. When it's off, there's enough room to pull out the forks and finally the main shaft and the lay shaft can be taken out in one piece. At least for now I didn't separate the gears since the bike didn't have much mileage on it and the gears show no worn. Still need to make sure they are well cleaned and oiled before reassembly.

Gearbox removed

Primary drive grear removed

As I mentioned, I don't have the tool to remove the primary drive gear which I've heard, pretty much requires the OEM tool for the job since it's pretty damn tight. There were ones on eBay for about 140£ which is about 160€. I wouldn't have been in a bankruptcy because of that but for a one time job didn't sound like it's worth it. Besides my usual part supplier guy mentioned about his friend who has the tool and is willing to help so I paid a visit and it was really worth the drive even though he doesn't live exactly the next door. He has been working with Ducati engines since eighties, been racing with Ducatis and at some point even servicing the bikes as a sub-contractor for the local shop. He really was very helpful and got tons of invaluable tips for the rebuild so I ended up spending couple hours there even though the job itself didn't take even half an hour.

Obviously the gear didn't get off just by talking. Turned the puller with impact gun for a while and nothing happened. This wasn't even my cheap one but his professional tool. So applied some good heat with electrical heat gun and tried again. Still took a while, but finally popped off, yay.

I still had the timing belt drive shaft in place as my self made tool didn't work too well and didn't have time to fine tune it yet. Well, got the belt gears off on the same trip. Finally asked some opinions about the crank preload and he suggested using a dial gauge and thinnest possible shims to measure the crank play and then calculate the correct shims. That's the alternative method described in the workshop manual. Measuring crank and the cases is quite tricky according to him but I still think I try that just out of curiosity and see how close readings I get. I think I still count on the "alternative" method if the readings aren't too close.

Worth mentioning that the timing belt drive shaft has one symmetric woodruff key and one offset one so I took a picture of it to remember that on reassembly. So the timing on horizontal cylinder doesn't seem to be exactly the same as the vertical. The difference isn't really big but I suppose the key has offset for a purpose.