Gear Selector Spring

In 42 years on various Laverdas I've had 2 of these return springs fail on me. That's a total of well over 200000km. No issues with repro springs either.

I don't bother to carry one of these with me, it's just a slight inconvenience if it breaks. Worse is the small pawl spring in the 120°, this can sideline you seriously until a replacement is found in BFN. Doesn't take up any space in the tool bag, cheap insurance. Pretty sure I won't have another fail.

piet
 
I bought my 3c in 1989 so that's 33 years and I also have broken 2 springs. I am an ardent gear changer in the twistest so it gets a workout. Well, that's not local bike roads, you can go harder the further away you get from Sydney. Local roads get way fewer gear changes, I sit in 2nd or 3rd and maintain corner speed with very little acceleration, safer on your licence, doing THE PACE technic. The second spring lasted maybe 5 years, that's just a guess though. I never know what gear I am in, I just row through till I run out of changes in both directions changing when it feels right usually around 5k or a bit less. Run any harder and you're risking your licence around suburbia or way worse on typical local bike roads that are posted at 60 or 80ks and are HEAVILY POLICED.
 
After washing my filthy bike yesterday I was girding my loins for the upcoming annual Autosoling of my Borani rims. But I thought a lazy technic might work so I did some googling and found this. And it worked pretty well at removing caked-on brake crap and even shined them up a bit, hope the overspray doesn't hurt the tyres. It worked really well including the really crap exhausts.
 
Vince said:
After washing my filthy bike yesterday I was girding my loins for the upcoming annual Autosoling of my Borani rims. But I thought a lazy technic might work so I did some googling and found this. And it worked pretty well at removing caked-on brake crap and even shined them up a bit, hope the overspray doesn't hurt the tyres. It worked really well including the really crap exhausts.
Click to expand...
Recommended by a kitchen guy,... hard to beat!!!
 
sfcpiet said:
In 42 years on various Laverdas I've had 2 of these return springs fail on me. That's a total of well over 200000km. No issues with repro springs either.

I don't bother to carry one of these with me, it's just a slight inconvenience if it breaks. Worse is the small pawl spring in the 120°, this can sideline you seriously until a replacement is found in BFN. Doesn't take up any space in the tool bag, cheap insurance. Pretty sure I won't have another fail.

piet
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In 42 years of Laverda use, I've had two of these springs break, one on the 3CL and recently, one on the S.
It's a right pain and if I'm going any distance, I now take a spare.

Paul
 
Last time I fitted one I took the trouble to polish it. I wasn't very happy with the roughness of the wire surface and thus stress raisers - I especially polished it on the tension side (inside) of the loop. Piet's pic seems to look like better material, the pic from Hamish is typical of the springs I have seen/used.
 
Thankfully I have all 5 gears but it's binding going down for the 2nd to 1st change, I need to slightly lift the lever before going down to 1st. It's not the eccentric adjustment as it gets all gears. There was a general comment regarding which way to bump the case cover to relieve this binding. Foreward or backward?
 
Reckon the slimmed down sprocket cover was the giveaway, Rob. ;) IIrc, later ones were cut differently, more angularly.

SFC selector arms normally have a reinforcing bridge over the stops either side of the eccentric adjuster. At least later ones did...

piet
 
sfcpiet said:
SFC selector arms normally have a reinforcing bridge over the stops either side of the eccentric adjuster. At least later ones did...
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What for? I wouldn't have expected that to be a likely failure point. I've never heard of anyone bending the stops on the gear selector. It would take a pretty heavy stomp of the boot on the lever to do that. Maybe with a heel-toe shift lever ...
 
I'll dig one out for you Cam.

It obviously wasn't expected from the works riders that to be very sympathetic on the gears... :LOL: SFCs all had heel/toe levers.

piet
 
sfcpiet said:
SFCs all had heel/toe levers.
Click to expand...

Did they not have a race-pattern gearshift?

I reckon you could put a fair bit of weight on the lever with the heel, so a bent selector stop is not so surprising in that case.

I've never ridden a bike with a heel-toe shift lever. I've always thought they were a bit un-necessary on a road bike. Although plenty of road bikes were fitted with them back in the day. The Honda step-through scooter is one that comes to mind. I guess they were for city commuters who didn't want to scuff the toe of their spit-polished office shoe. :)
 
Heel-toe is wonderful once you get used to it. Greatest advantage, for racers at least, no need to get UNDER the lever to change gear when heeled well over. Probably has saved a lot of boot caps... and toes!

Ideal set-up when wearing thongs, too. :LOL:

piet
 
sfcpiet said:
Reckon the slimmed down sprocket cover was the giveaway, Rob. ;) IIrc, later ones were cut differently, more angularly.

SFC selector arms normally have a reinforcing bridge over the stops either side of the eccentric adjuster. At least later ones did...

piet
Click to expand...
Only the disc brake SFCs had this mod.

Marnix
 
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