Until recently I thought the metal gears were an improvement but now...not so sure. We had a failure that I am putting down to poor design / management of change from Rotax and bad luck from us. Why Rotax design? - Well -tell me a (real) engineer who designs an engine using the circlip faces as bearing surfaces for driven metal gears? Surely you would always use a plain washer between the retaining device and the rotating part?! not Rotax - they saved 1mm of shaft width and 10p in parts instead. Anyhow - despite new circlips put on carefully without twist or stretch when clutch was installed beginning of last season, and clean oil / right level / regular checks, it failed. To be fair, it worked fine until the one time we got the gearing way too low on a drying track end of year and it was revving at just over 14k along the straight(junior 09), for some reason it cuffed its circlip off the crank, and the loose gear and floating circlip had a field day... All gears shredded, metal and plastic, bearings siezed, and seals gone... Inside of clutch cover looks like its been attacked with a shotgun. Could have been worse I guess.(Could have been YOUR engine !)
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