200E Case Splitting Question...

[kb0nly]

While in the process of working on my own 200 project a friend mentioned he has a 200E with a cracked left crankcase, its broken near the output shaft and i am guess someone wrapped up a chain pretty badly on it! Anyway, he asked since i am tearing one down if i would fix his but i really don't have a ton of time and its been 20 plus years since i split a bottom end on these...

So quick refresher... Can't you remove the left crankcase without touching the right side? I seem to recall you could pull off the top end, then its 8 bolts from the left and one from the right near the jug base and then you can pull off the left case without disturbing the clutches and opening up the right side at all. If thats the case, no pun intended, i could get his left case swapped out quickly, thankfully he has already pulled the motor, pulled off the top end, but just not brave enough to replace the case side and i got enough on my plate lately to spend a day tearing apart the right side on another motor and case splitting.

Comments?? I'm sure someone on here has done a left case swap quick and dirty before.

[BarnBoy]

No you need to split them both. If you're super careful you can leave the trans gears in the right case and just swap the left. But if you're in that far, you may as well clean it all up, new bearings etc. MAKE SURE you write down which washers go where, which direction the gears go on etc. And have a factory service manual. There are lots of details you can screw up so take the trans apart slowly and record everything. I split the cases on my 200M which is very similar and didn't put it back together till months later. No problems since id taken such good notes.

Edit: I re-read your post. I think you could likely leave the clutches intact come to think of it. Its not much extra work to pull them all apart but its up to you I guess. I suppose you could do it quick and dirty like that.....yeah I dont see why that wouldnt work. Depends how detailed you wanna get. If you're in that far I'd go whole hog but thats just me.

[RodKnockRacing]

It will be hell of a lot easier to just tear it all down in my opinion

Sent from my moto z4 using Tapatalk

[kb0nly]

Case swap complete... I didn't want to pull apart the right side because it had new clutches and gaskets all installed and i didn't want to disturb anything and risk tearing a gasket. He pulled the top end before it got to me and i pulled the left side off with some wiggling and tapping, i have a crude jig made of 2x4's to hold a 200 on its right side that i screw to the bench and i just used it to rebuild my project so it was ready to go, cleaned up and put a new center gasket in, and put it back together. The inside of the motor was clean as a whistle, they already flushed and cleaned it out when they did the clutches and work on the right side. I don't know the rest of the story, just how it came to me.

It would have been a lot more work to pull the clutches and everything on the right side. I didn't even have to tear that side apart, the centrifugal clutch held the crank in, the manual clutch kept the trans all in place, so it was just pull off the left side and put it back on. Took about an hour all said and done. Most of the time was cleaning up the gasket surfaces to keep stuff out of the right side case. Overall not a big deal.

Bearings all seemed fine, no issues that i would toss any more money into it, let er rip!

[BarnBoy]

Case swap complete... I didn't want to pull apart the right side because it had new clutches and gaskets all installed and i didn't want to disturb anything and risk tearing a gasket. He pulled the top end before it got to me and i pulled the left side off with some wiggling and tapping, i have a crude jig made of 2x4's to hold a 200 on its right side that i screw to the bench and i just used it to rebuild my project so it was ready to go, cleaned up and put a new center gasket in, and put it back together. The inside of the motor was clean as a whistle, they already flushed and cleaned it out when they did the clutches and work on the right side. I don't know the rest of the story, just how it came to me.

It would have been a lot more work to pull the clutches and everything on the right side. I didn't even have to tear that side apart, the centrifugal clutch held the crank in, the manual clutch kept the trans all in place, so it was just pull off the left side and put it back on. Took about an hour all said and done. Most of the time was cleaning up the gasket surfaces to keep stuff out of the right side case. Overall not a big deal.

Bearings all seemed fine, no issues that i would toss any more money into it, let er rip!

Yeaaaaaah buddy! You're way less picky than I am lol, id be afraid of filling the crankcase full of gasket material and just getting junk in there. But quick n dirty, you got er done and she'll probably run the same as if you tore it all the way down. Thanks for sharing!

[kb0nly]

If it was mine, i probably would have done the same and just sucked it up and bought more gaskets... But he was on a tight budget and deadline to get it running for a trail ride. Once i got the side off i stuffed shop towels everywhere, cleaned the gasket off the right side of the case then used a shop vac, air gun, and carefully cleaned it all up and removed all the packing i stuffed into it. The left side i just cleaned up and then hosed off with a can of brake clean. Overall i think it was fine, any tiny bits that got away would just end up in the bottom of the case and into the oil screen anyway.

One interesting thing i learned... So he had a really filthy engine inside when he got it, like probably never had an oil change bad. So he taught me how he flushed it and i plan on making a rig to do the same. He made a cap to put in where the oil dipstick goes and it has a piece of tubing through it long enough to get to the bottom of the case, then the oil drain he took a spare cap and drilled and tapped the center of it for a hose nipple. He took out the spring and oil strainer, spinned that cap on and had a tube from it going down to a 5 gal bucket of kerosene, then a small pond pump in the bucket that pumps up to the dipstick hole. He just turned the case into a parts washer basically, left it like that for an hour and flushed all the crud out. He cleaned the rest when he did the right side work replacing the clutches. Sadly if he didn't need to split the case it would have been a really slick solution, it got the center section spotless clean!