Question About Crankcase Cover Reassembly

Hello,

I recently replaced my water pump seal, bearing, impeller shaft, and circlip due to an exchange of oil and coolant occuring at the seal.  

After reassembling everything I placed the crankcase cover back onto the side of the engine and I had no problem getting it flush with the mating service.  I went ahead and tightened the bolts on the side cover.  However, the manual states "Turn the impeller shaft and check the engagingGof impeller shaft gear and primary drive gear,and assemble the right crankcase cover"  Before putting on the water pump housing cover I tried to spin the impeller shaft and it wouldn't turn.  Now I'm concerned the gears didn't line up together, but I don't want to take off the side cover again if I don't have to because I just put a fresh gasket on.  I know for sure I put the new impeller, bearing, and seal on correctly.  The new assembly functioned perfectly before I put the crankcase cover back on.  

My questions are:  If the crankcase cover was flush with the side of the engine than is it still possible that the gears are not connected properly between the impellar shaft gear and main drive gear?  Is there anything I'm missing here?  


Any help would be appreciated.

AlgizWR250R wrote:

If the crankcase cover was flush with the side of the engine than is it still possible that the gears are not connected properly between the impellar shaft gear and main drive gear?

Yes, it's possible that the gears are not correctly engaged, although if they weren't I would have expected the impeller shaft to turn freely rather than not at all. Irrespective, there's no avoiding the fact that you have to go back in and see what's going on.

@johnkol

Thanks for the input.  Yep, I just took it off again and I realized that I can't turn the main gear by hand but if I take off the screw-on plug on the left side of the engine I can just use a socket to turn the engine over thus turning the gears on the right side of the engine.

Nothing was wrong with the install after all. Once I get this new oil filter in the mail I will be able to see if the bearing, seal, and impeller shaft replacement fixes the oil and coolant exchange. Hopefully not a headgasket failure (fingers crossed)

AlgizWR250R wrote:

Yep, I just took it off again and I realized that I can't turn the main gear by hand but if I take off the screw-on plug on the left side of the engine I can just use a socket to turn the engine over thus turning the gears on the right side of the engine.  

That's one way of testing it. The other is to rotate the rear wheel while in gear since the water pump gear is driven off the clutch basket. Anyway, glad it's working.

Head gasket failures are pretty rare; did you have an incident that makes you believe the head gasket could have been damaged?

johnkol wrote:

AlgizWR250R wrote:

Yep, I just took it off again and I realized that I can't turn the main gear by hand but if I take off the screw-on plug on the left side of the engine I can just use a socket to turn the engine over thus turning the gears on the right side of the engine.  

That's one way of testing it. The other is to rotate the rear wheel while in gear since the water pump gear is driven off the clutch basket. Anyway, glad it's working.

Head gasket failures are pretty rare; did you have an incident that makes you believe the head gasket could have been damaged?

I tried rotating the rear wheel with it in gear prior to taking the plug out. I found it difficult to turn. I'm assuming that you would have to remove the spark plug for this method to work? Or maybe I just gave it too weak an effort.

I didn't have an incident that made me think the head gasket went but the previous owner did not take good care of this bike. When I bought this bike I noticed the coolant over flow resevoir was full of oil, the drive chain tension was probably 2 cms to loose, many fasteners were missing, wheels not trued, etc, etc. I'm just hoping that it wasn't ridden too hard after the previous owner noticed the oil in the coolant.

I did perform a head gasket leak test with a harbor freight liquid tester kit and it showed no signs of exhaust gases in the coolant system.

AlgizWR250R wrote:

I tried rotating the rear wheel with it in gear prior to taking the plug out.  I found it difficult to turn.  I'm assuming that you would have to remove the spark plug for this method to work?

Absolutely you have to remove the plug, but I assumed you had done so in order to rotate the crank since this is standard procedure when checking valve clearances.

AlgizWR250R wrote:

I did perform a head gasket leak test with a harbor freight liquid tester kit and it showed no signs of exhaust gases in the coolant system.

That's good news.

@johnkol

I wasn't checking the valve clearences. I was just replacing the water pump spindle, bearing, and seal due to an oil/coolant exchange. Fortunately I didn't have to remove the valve cover for this particular job.

What I was driving at was that every time you need to turn the crank manually you ought to remove the plug, as exemplified in the valve check process. But the way I worded it came up mangled.

Anyway, everything appears to be working so no issues.