Baja 5t clutch grabs only grabs when it wants too

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Houser1995

Member
Messages
21
Hello all I recently purchased a 5t from a friend of mine (used) with a “30.5cc” engine allegedly. The plastic covers had 30.5 badges and I was told that it was a fuelie engine.
I didn’t get a chance to run it when I bought it as it’s in the mid 20’s here and we we’re outside for the transaction so I trusted his word. Well that was a mistake on my part.
I finally got it running last night after hours of troubleshooting. It would start and idle fine when cold, it would even handle some revs. But after about 10-20 seconds it would die. And after that it didn’t want to start, it would pop and sometimes even idle for a second or two then die. But after sitting for an hour or so it would run fune for 10-20 seconds again. It was and endless loop of frustration. I ended up buying a walbro 997 and a few ngk plugs, threw it on and it didn’t solve a thing other than it would idle great for as long as I wanted but if i gave it throttle it would rev for a few seconds then die out just as before. It had good compression (would blow my thumb off the head) but I ended up getting pissed and ripped the head off of it anyways. The engine looked relatively new but I discovered that it is a 2 bolt engine with a 36mm piston 28mm stroke. Which would be a 28.5cc clone of some sort. He must’ve put 30.5cc covers on it. But anyways after pulling the head I found my issue and it wasn’t the cylinder or piston. I decided to leave the coil bolted to the head when I disassembled it because the coil gap was set perfectly and I didn’t feel like setting it again. But low and behold when I was looking at the cylinder I realized that the pickups on the coil were caked in fine dust goop. Well an old toothbrush and some alcohol on the coil pickups was all it ended up needing. It’s up and running like a top now.

Well sort of, it runs great but doesn’t move so well. The clutch grabs at a considerably high rpm when it does want to grab, and other times it will rev to the moon and won’t grab at all. There is no slow putting around with it it’s kind of an all or nothing type of deal. And when it grabs it grabs, it doesn’t slip whatsoever. So that being said does anyone know what might be causing it to grab intermittently? I already have two clutch kits on the way. One 6k and the other a 7k. But I have yet to tear into one of these so I’m not sure what to expect. I at first thought that maybe the bolts that hold the shoes could be rusted up or something but I feel like if that were the case it would also not want to disengage very well. Any suggestions or help is appreciated!

And if your still reading your a trooper lmao sorry for writing a novel but I like to spell things out very clear and detailed on forums so that it will help anybody troubleshooting or having similar issues. And I hope this will help someone out in the future!
Ps I inherited my grandmothers house and I’m in the process of moving so don’t mind the mess or the spots of wallpaper all over lmao that stuff is a royal pain to get off
 

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Taking the clutch bell apart will tell you straight away whats going on, they are very simple to fix and put back, just need a piston stopper in case you have to replace it.
Could be screws coming loose, spring being rip or a wrong mounted clutch, nothing you can fix or know without first opening it up.
 
what Dashz said mate ☝️,
open it up and have a looksy,
could be rusted bolts, could be a loose clutch perch that grabs every so often ( loose crank bolt), could be loose pinion or a broken weld on the bells shaft etc etc,
Haha I know I know guys I was too tired to tinker last night and had a lot going on today. I think I’m going to tear into it now though! I might as well dig into the tranny too.

It has the old king motors v1 2 speed trans and I’ve been in touch with Dan, he says he has a small box of parts Left for the v1 so I guess I should see what I might need and buy replacements while I still can. He does happen to have a bell for the two speed so that’s good news, I’ll probably buy the bell even if the one on the truck is good just to have it. Oh and he has some 1 way bearings I think I’m going to buy a few of them.

Anybody that has experience with the old km v1 2 speeds feel free to chime in and tell me what to keep an eye on, and what the weak links are so I can stock up on parts. It seems to be operating flawlessly at the moment. Well when the clutch wants to grab that is. Prior owner set the shift point at a somewhat reasonable rpm so that’s good, I still think I might drop it a little just to take some load off of everything when second kicks in. But I know how quickly things can go south in this hobby so I just want to know what to expect I guess. Dan mentioned the 1 way bearings were the downfall of that trans but didn’t say much of anything else.
I’m about to start breaking it down and I figured I would throw some pictures up through the process of disassembly in case anybody wants to use it for reference. There isn’t much info out there on the v1’s. I will update this post as I go and report any findings.
 

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Alright so I am not going to go through step by step as disassembly is pretty straightforward and similar to the single speed trans, and there’s tons of videos out there. But I did get pictures of everything coming off in order so they can be used as reference.F107A3CB-9427-49BD-A536-0B5E5673D38C.jpeg876F9B63-E0C7-4ED1-9651-50074CED9DFD.jpegCEB0EA6E-9927-448F-ADB4-17477EFD587D.jpegB33F5AE5-B2F5-41B6-8A82-CF8A2612F789.jpeg553E2BE6-D567-43E2-81FC-F570E7A98A8B.jpeg271A6632-E370-4FB2-89AF-20D6DE1B4F40.jpeg372545F4-B79B-4FD3-86D4-3C9332A048D7.jpeg39E39F21-43E3-4191-94E9-6EF80C004063.jpeg2893CC09-BF3C-423E-875E-1805EADF5EC8.jpeg7E55093D-05F7-4715-B9B8-94B9164991AB.jpeg977A6E29-9C02-4AAC-925C-2266FDE626AB.jpeg

Disassembly was easy as can be, the only notes that I will add are that when you are removing the rear big spur (1st gear) that there are two pins through the lay shaft (3rd and 4th pic) that act as keyways. You may have to use a small flathead or pick to try and center the pins somewhat to help you get it off. I found this gear to be a pain to get off. I actually removed it once somewhat easily then popped it back on. And the second go at removing it was where it gave me trouble. So I centered those pins and finangled with it for a minute and it came free.

Second thing to note is you may use a 10mm Allen wrench to hold the clutch when unbolting it. I didn’t have a piston stopper handy, you may have a different clutch kit/motor than mine so you may be able to do it differently.

I didn’t want to mix my findings in with the disassembly post, but anyways I found the culprit to be a clutch on its last leg. The bell appaers to still be good. Symptoms were weird as it sometimes wouldn’t engage but it is what it is haha

Also the trans appears to be in pretty good shape. 1 way bearing looks new, lay shaft is straight, clutch that engages second gear is in pretty good shape, and all gears look really good for the prior owner running with no cover. The only thing that concerned me was the carrier that holds the big spur (1st gear spur) it looks a bit chewed up as in the picture below.
 

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Hopefully someone sees this and gets as much of a kick out of it as me. So I ordered two clutch kits off eBay before I made this post. One 6k and one 7k and they were taking ages in the mail (usps).

So I checked out Amazon and found an 8k clutch kit for 5 bucks! And it was quoted to arrive in two days. Well it showed up today and this is what I got lmfao image.jpgimage.jpg5DCCFA30-78CA-46A3-A9F3-A422F74A8F89.png
Needless to say it’s getting returned. I’ll put the 6 dollars or so towards something else and the company that packed this thing can eat some shipping costs. That’s insane lol like that thing must go on a moped or scooter or something
But on the other hand my local true value and Lowe’s have ever nut and bolt that is on this tranny. Absolutely identical in every way, so I’m pretty excited about that. I’m going to use all new hardware when I put it back together!

Anybody got any special recommendations on thread lock? I planned on using blue loctite but I’m open to others if anybody has a suggestion. Allen heads always worry me, I’ve stripped one to many in my lifetime so I’m skeptical on threadlock but I think I should use it on this job.
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