Reinstalling clutch basket on an F4i (primary/sub gear alignment?)

[esses]

I really wish I had a picture of what I'm about to describe below.....

I'd recently removed my clutch, and clutch basket. The back side of the clutch outer has teeth on it that are intended to mesh with the primary drive gear and it's sub gear.

The primary drive and sub gear appear to be spring loaded.... and are now scissored so they're no longer aligned. (I'm assume I botched something to keep them aligned when I removed the basket originally). The service manual is pretty vague about using a screw driver to realign these gears.... except I have no idea what they mean by that.

I've tried pushing... I've tried leveraging one gear against the other (always careful of the ignition pulse generator).... but I just can't get the two to move independantly at all. Do any ove you have any tricks / tips here?

[elskipador]

yup, remove the inner most needle bearing in the clutch basket, the one that rides on the tranmission shaft. with the extra room its easy to align the 2 gears. once the teeth mesh just slip the needle bearing in and you're good to go.

[esses]

Thanks for the quick reply! I'm still a little confused though. How does removing the needle bearings on the transmission shaft help align the 2 gears? I grabbed a screen shot out of the service manual and highlighted the 2 gears I'm having issues aligning in red...

http://esses.smugmug.com/photos/221123567-M.jpg

[elskipador]

you don't take the roller bearing off the transmission shaft, you remove the needle bearing from the clutch basket. this'll make it alot easier to align the gear on the back of the clutch basket with the one you circled, by creating more room for you to move the basket around on the shaft.

[esses]

Okay that seems to make sense with regards to giving me more maneuverability with the clutch basket. I'm still not entirely sure how it'll help me "unscisor" the primary drive gear and sub gears (both reside in that red circle).

I'll go home and try it right after work though! Maybe it'll all become clear when I get my hands in there.... Thanks for the help! :)

[esses]

Posting a resolution just for archival sake in case anyone else has this issue somepoint in the future.

I managed to get the clutch outer reinstalled (past the spring loaded primary/sub driver gears) without having to remove any needlebearings. It actually all fit on there really easily.

Basically, I just used a lever to rotate the clutch outer... using it to unscissor the sub-gear and main drive gears.

The trick here was putting the clutch outer on the transmission drive shaft so it's teeth meshed with the subgear first. The sub-gear is spring loaded with the main drive gear behind it (i assume to make sure there's no slop in the egagement).

Once it's on and resting, I put a breaker bar (or some other long item) through the prongs of the clutch basket (the prongs that actually engage the clutch plate tabs). With that lever, you can just rotate the clutch outer basket fairly easily .... which will scissor open the sub-gear... eventually allowing all the teeth (clutch outer, sub gear, and main drive gear) to all line up.

A little gentle tapping with a rubber mallet and it all fits back together.