[Kevin]

[quote quote=5529]Kevin, Do you have to run the clutch with the drive sprocket “outboard” in order to clear the chassis properly? From what I have seen since we got our WF many years ago, the general consensus is that running it “inboard” places considerably less strain on the crank and drive-side bearing. [/quote]

I’ve heard that – to do that on this kart, I’d have to remove some of the unused (currently) middle axle bearing bracket.  That would be easy to do, though – I might try that when the new clutch arrives.

[Kevin]

[quote quote=5528]Sounds like that washer is the shield for the needle bearing piece of the assembly (officially named the thrust bearing). Check out the exploded view here: http://www.noramclutch.com/go-kart-clutch/premier/titan-sp2.html [/quote]

That was the drawing I was going by – if you’re talking about the thrust washer, that’s not it.  This piece had a large enough ID (and was much thinner than the thrust washer) to almost slip past the spiral snap ring holding the sprocket to the drum, and didn’t really have the right dimensions to locate any particular part of the assembly.

[Kevin]

Thanks Alan – yeah, the current clutch is the orange springs (I was under the possibly-mistaken impression that I had to have those, since that’s “how the motor is delivered” – although maybe you can order a WF motor with other colors?).

So last week, I noticed that the original clutch that came on the motor did have the hub reversed (and appeared to have non-orange springs, although they were hard to identify), and this kart has seemed to have this issue since we bought it.  I did buy a new clutch before getting the motor rebuilt, however – and last Friday remembered that, when I got this motor back from rebuilding, the clutch came back inboard – at the time I just turned it back around without disassembling it, so my working theory was that maybe this was a side effect of reversing the hub (notwithstanding the number of people who seem to do it that way out of preference).  I took it apart last Saturday, and no – the hub direction was the right configuration for outboard, but there was an oddly sized thin (very thin, like feeler gauge stock) washer/shim that was “sort of” underneath the snap ring that keeps the sprocket in the drum.  The ID of this thing was large enough that only some of it would be located under the snap ring at any one time – so suddenly my theory converted to “perhaps the drum is initially misaligned relative to the shoes, due to this shim/washer thing?”  I couldn’t even find this shim on the diagrams on Noram’s site, so I removed it…   This seemed to help, although not completely – and I noted that the outboard-direction half of the shoes had slipped a lot.  This was clear from the amount of material built up in the grooves.  So I’ve got a new clutch coming, we’ll be careful breaking it in, and see if that helps.

 

[Kevin]

Wow – thanks a ton for the response.  Makes sense, since I couldn’t imagine that the jetting (or the gearing) was *that* far off.  I have a buddy who’s into snowmobiles that pointed out that he’s had similar issues with those when the clutch wasn’t quite right, so I’ll focus on that for the time being.  Thanks again!

[Author]

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