The Hodaka Club Forum

Ed, Have you seen this before.
I'm trying to post a picture of my 5 piece ball receiver. The motor was stuck between gears. Now for the pictures.

Sterling,
No I don't recall ever seeing a failure like that before. The outer surface of the ball receiver has the expected peened surface - and appears to be pretty normal, except for the little detail that it is in five pieces!! It is interesting that a part which lives its life either under no load or under pretty high compressive loads would cleave apart (with amazingly flat cleaved "faces") like that.

The ball receiver is designed to be more "tough" than "hard" so it will absorb loads/damage, rather than inflict loads/damage on the counter shaft balls. A failure of this sort is so exceedingly rare that I'd tend to chalk it up to . . . stuff happens. If a rash of failures of this sort should start to show up, then it would point to a batch of ball receivers which were manufactured out of the wrong material or which got the wrong heat treatment.

Thanks for posting the photos! Very interesting (and rare).
Ed

Mike Perrett told me a couple of months ago I should post a picture of the broken ball receiver. I was reluctant to learn the posting process but it was very easy. The ball receiver was in my Ace 100 Trials bike. I'm pretty sure a new one was installed when the engine was rebuilt. That was the bike I took to Mid Ohio in 2006. I met Mike and Rick Mott there as well a many others including you. I don't think the bike was ever ridden hard. I kinda thought the heat treating wasn't properly done. Anyway thanks for your response.
Sterling