Dellortoman
Hero member
- Location
- Tasmania, Australia
It's just my opinion, but I'm not keen on gearboxes that have the input and output on the same shaft centreline. A lot of bike manufacturers do it, but it means the shaft must be split into two sections, which often introduces a weakness. It doesn't have to be a weakness if both sections of the shaft are well supported by bearings (such as with Red's outrigger bearing modification) but in practice they rarely are.
It's a common feature on bikes with chain primary drive. Engines usually rotate in the same direction as the wheels, so a chain primary means the main shaft in the gearbox goes the same way, and the countershaft rotates backwards. That pretty much dictates that the rear wheel drive sprocket has to hang off the end off the main shaft with a sleeve bearing arrangement somewhere on the shaft.
The primary chain and the sleeve gear are both weak points in the Laverda power train, so it's a crappy setup really.
Geared primary drives (Kawasaki Z1 for example) eliminate both the primary chain and the crappy sleeve bearing because the final drive sprocket is on the end of the countershaft. Both shafts in the gearbox are solid and supported at each end by decent bearings. Ducati bucks the system. Their engines rotate backwards :
It's a common feature on bikes with chain primary drive. Engines usually rotate in the same direction as the wheels, so a chain primary means the main shaft in the gearbox goes the same way, and the countershaft rotates backwards. That pretty much dictates that the rear wheel drive sprocket has to hang off the end off the main shaft with a sleeve bearing arrangement somewhere on the shaft.
The primary chain and the sleeve gear are both weak points in the Laverda power train, so it's a crappy setup really.
Geared primary drives (Kawasaki Z1 for example) eliminate both the primary chain and the crappy sleeve bearing because the final drive sprocket is on the end of the countershaft. Both shafts in the gearbox are solid and supported at each end by decent bearings. Ducati bucks the system. Their engines rotate backwards :