Being my Japanese is non existant, I am hoping for better clutch action. As eliminating clutch drag and a better hitting clutch. I have known about the shim trick for years , but could never find them thin enough till recently.
Please let us know how that works out. With such thin shims, it would seem to me that only the superhumanly sensitive and precise World Riders would be able to discern a difference. It will be interesting to learn what you experience.
I used to use the shorter levers but now I use the stock levers with the perch in as far as it will go. Gives more leverage to reduce pull and also makes it less likely to break a lever in a fall.
I like that idea. I prefer short levers, but this is too simple and obvious not to do. Especially as the lighter clutch pull is a bonus. thanks.
If you are going to do a job, do it properly and with the correct tools.
Flywheel pullers and holding tools are not even expensive.
Ferchrissakes.
Agreed. The only thing worse than watching a stupid person trash a bike during a repair, because they don't know what they are doing is watching a knowledgable person trash a motorcycle during a repair, because they are too cheap to buy the right tool. Always strikes me as cosmic justice.
"There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves."
Good advice in this thread. I've heard of several of these runaway engine situations. Once the spark plug turns into a glow plug, hitting the kill switch or yanking the plug wire is ineffective. Blocking the exhaust seems the only quick option. Use your boot or some mud, a stick, a rock not your hand. Nasty burn would result. Blocking the intake wouldn't be as easy.
I know a guy who saved an expensive diesel engine that was running away by blocking the air intake with his jacket.
Big Timbob, do you remember if you leaned the biker against the wall on the right side or the left side? Displaced throttle cable seems the most likely cause to me.
It's winter here (single digits F) and I don't have a heated garage so the short answer is no. Plus I screwed up the jig I had for drilling the extra holes when the chuck on my cheapo drill slipped. The drill bit bound in the hole and bent the drill bit ever so slightly which I didn't notice until after I drilled all the holes, reaming out the locating jig I made and pooching the spare indexing cam I bought. Made me step back and reassess the plan. Then real work intruded and I haven't got back to it yet. I do have a second jig but I've been considering taking a different tack. I've got most of a cam drawn up in eMachineshop and the cost to have custom cams made isn't too bad so I might just forgo the drilling and design my own cam with a custom profile. I'm leaning towards a steeper cam angle with a flat top. Like the older Japanese bikes where there is more resistance to the initial rotation but no resistance once up on top of the flat between gears. This would take a bit more effort to shift between gears but make it more positive once a gear is engaged. I think this is what gives them their "snicky" feel. I'd also go much shallower on the neutral notch. Unfortunately with the cam sitting in a case well and having to fit under the clutch basket there's not a lot of room to play with dimensions. This is just the initial drawing so no modified profile or neutral notch. Or indexing holes.
Thanks for the update Dan. With very little background info, I think I would have taken a lazy approach and experimented with taking a round file or Dremel tool to the first and second gear notches and deepened them a bit at the two points where the too big cam follower bearing touches the notch. Problem is it would be tough to quantify and measure. And probably very easy to make the first and second gear shifting a bit too "notchy." I would have bought at least one spare cam first though, just in case.
Though your approach does seems like a lot more fun and more scientific.
Yeah that was Don Sweet’s suggestion but I still want the surety of moving neutral to somewhere it won’t interfere with section riding if it’s possible. I do think it’s funny after all that talk about no transmission or clutch issues you admit you had springs made and are just now realizing the stepped washers can be flipped to change preload.
By design the gear selector has a restoring force which indexes the drum. This means the mechanism is supposed to chase the drum into the proper position as the likelyhood of indexing the drum to exactly the correct position using just the lever is pretty small. This fits well with the idea that around the neutral half notch there is insufficient restoring force if the throw of the mechanism doesn’t rotate the drum into the full gear engagement. It also means that just tapping the shift lever or even an impact acting on the weight of the lever may be sufficient to pop the indexing cam to the neutral position.
I have noticed the majority of times the bike has popped into neutral has been after an impact or bounce on the suspension. I think the revised shift cam Beta now uses is to address the throw of the restoring force which is reduced by the too large bearing used for the indexing arm. The actual force and indexing location remain the same. What they should have done is made the notch deeper in first and second gear but the indexing pins don’t allow that modification.
In a few years we’ll all be on electric bikes anyway and this will be moot.
Dan,
Have you made any progress in relocating neutral to between 4th and 5th? Enquiring minds want to know!
Mine hasn’t swelled but I’m running VP with no ethanol. Then again I wouln’t pass up free bling if they throw it my way.
Staying away from gas with ethanol is always a good habit in my book. I only use the E10 gas in my car and truck. Everything else gets non-ethanol 93 octane and I add Sta-bil. Just as an experiment, my last batch of fuel was 1 gallon of 112 octane mixed with 1.5 gallons of 93 octane. I don't notice any difference from 93 octane.
My Beta dealer called today and said that due to the cross threading and swelling problems, Beta is replacing plastic gas caps with aluminum gas caps under warranty. I do not know if this applies to 2018 Betas also. I have read that prior to 2018, Betas had aluminum gas caps.
If you have a 2018 or 2019 you might want to call your dealer to check if you are eligible for a aluminum gas cap.
This will obviously increase the weight on the front of the bike. Don't forget to adjust your suspension and riding technique accordingly.......
? Auto spelling correction is the bane of those of us with dyslexia.......
1 hour ago, heffergm said:
Published 2011:
In his book, “Exploring Global Landscapes of Litigation,” Christian Wollschlager notes that the litigation rates per 1,000 people shows that European nations top the list of the world’s most litigious countries.
Here is a list of the top 5 most litigious countries by capita:
Germany: 123.2/1,000
Sweden: 111.2/1,000
Israel: 96.8/1,000
Austria: 95.9/1,000
U.S.: 74.5/1,000
The Top 10 also includes the UK (64.4); Denmark (62.5); Hungary (52.4); Portugal (40.7); and France (40.3).
I decided to get some folding ARC levers. Looking at the website, BR-204 & CL-204 supposedly fit 1997-2019, BR-205 & CL-205 supposedly fit 2005-2019, and BR-206 & CL-206 supposedly fit 2015-2019.
Three different part numbers all fit the 2019 model? That made my spider sense tingle as I suspect the website info was no good. So I called, and the guy who answered the phone said the 206 levers were the ones I needed for the 2019 bike. I ordered them and they don't fit. 8mm diameter pivot pin and a 6mm ID bearing in the lever. So I thought I would remove the bearings and use them like that, or drill them out for the stock bearings, but, for once I had enough sense to double check. The aluminum bearing holder part of the lever is about 3 mm too thick to fit in the Beta lever perches. I have not been able to get thru to ARC for about a week and a half, so I expect they may be in a end of year plant shut down.
I checked the levers against a friend's 2016 EVO 300, and the levers are too thick to fit in those perches also.
Is anyone else running the ARC levers in a new beta, and if so what are the part numbers? Thanks.
Without taking apart a whole pile of bikes to analyze the hardware it’s, at best, a guess. Slightly mis-machined parts can have a huge effect on operation of the shift mechanism........
Engineering is the science of, “Whoa! Didn’t see that coming.”
Well said Dan. Improper manufacture of a proper design can function just as poorly as a p*** poor design. The laws of physics don't give a damn about anyone's feelings. Some of us like that.?
As a former co-worker noted "The best part of engineering is you get paid to tell people that 2 + 2 doesn't equal 5, and that 10 pounds of sh*t doesn't fit in a 5 pound bag."
Back to hardware.
MY 2018:
gear stopper cam is p/n 12.19101.000, gear stop lever is p/n 21.171.000
MY 2019:
gear stopper cam is p/n 12.19101.000 only for the 200, 125, 250, and 300 use p/n 007.05.007.00.00, strange to change that on only 3 bikes, no problem on the 200 with the MY 2018 part? If the 125 was the same as the 200, I'd guess the higher torque of the 250 & 300 made it easier to jump out of gear with the old gear stopper cam, gear stop lever is still p/n 21.171.000 on all bikes for MY 2019
? thanks for explaining. Maybe you can help me ? Americans say "sold" with an "l" , yes ? But solder turns into "soder" Why ?
The only time a Brit should ask a Yank to explain English to them is when they can't find a Aussie.
I used to work for a French owned company. I told all the Europeans who came over here on long term assignment the same thing: "If you want to understand America, you should watch the movie My Cousin Vinny at least 3 times."
Great thread guys with lots of knowledgable opinions. Old farts from my generation love blunt communication, there is no room for misinterpretation. Feelings be damned! Let's solve some problems.
As my friends get sick of hearing, my opinion is that offense is always in the receiver, not the transmitter.
"I don't give a damn about your feelings! I'm trying to help you dammit!"
Don't worry about me lineaway, I melted out of my snowflake stage about 40 years ago. ? I'm not worried, just interested. Easiest check would be to compare 2018 part numbers to 2019 part numbers. But to date, I have been a bit too busy/lazy to do so. I will sooner or later, out of curiosity. When I do, I will post what I find.
So far my 2019 Beta seems world's better (in terms of quality of manufactured parts) than the Sherco's I have owned, and I know a few people who have owned Beta's for 20 plus years with no problems. Possible exception for the gas caps on both, where Sherco and Beta both have issues. Lots of European motorcycle manufacturer's have issues with plastic tanks, caps, etc. US fuel is very suspect here.
My Aprilia RXV 550 also had great quality of manufactured parts, unfortunately, the assemblers drank way too much wine at lunchtime. Hopefully, Beta employees don't have the same habits. I can't complain too much about Italians, though, cause I married one. ?
The jig is in and fits like it was made for this. Which it was. Let the fettling begin!
Dan,
Thanks for making this a fascinating post. As a mechanical engineer with a couple decades of experience in the machine/tool design and fab business, I appreciate your logical thought process.
A couple questions:
- was the bike only jumping out of 1st and 2nd gear? If so, that makes the idea of location neutral between 4th and 5th simply brilliant. I remember the 60's when the first question you would ask before riding someone else's bike was "What is the shift pattern?"
- have you tried to cross reference shifter part numbers between the 2018 model year and the 2019 model year Beta to see which parts were changed? Assuming of course that the marketing hype is real.
- I agree with your idea that going to a smaller diameter cam follower bearing will make it tougher for the bikes to jump out of gear.
If your current efforts are not productive, you could always try the last ditch desperation effort of rotating the shift lever upwards on the shift shaft. ? Not as much fun as the more involved tinkering, but sometimes the KISS principle works. Especially after all else fails. Murphy has a wicked sense of humor!
Unfortunately not I was hoping to get some pics to put up here but they’d already been took to beta before I got there as they was collecting a set of bikes. They just said new selector
danbillam,
It really would be interesting to know what parts (and part numbers) were replaced and the part numbers of the replacement parts. I don't recall the year of the Beta you had that was jumping out of gear. What year was the bike?
I understand that this may be a rare occurrence, but one would think Beta would make maximum effort to inform owners who had the problem of exactly what the problem was and exactly how the problem was fixed.
After owning over 45 bikes over roughly the same number of years, KTM has been the worst manufacturer I have had experience with in regards to sharing technical information with owners and dealers. Since my 2019 EVO 250 is my first Beta, hopefully, I will not experience the same with Beta.
Do any forum posters out there have reliable sources of technical information inside Beta?
Evo 250 Clutch
in Beta
Posted
Please let us know how that works out. With such thin shims, it would seem to me that only the superhumanly sensitive and precise World Riders would be able to discern a difference. It will be interesting to learn what you experience.