The Hodaka Club Forum

Hello, does anyone have tips getting the little clip back on the Kickstarter lever. I’m having a hard time and maybe someone has come up with a simple solution. Thanks in advance.

Just looking at it it looks like an old valve spring compressor would work. Hodaka Doug has one as he redoes them now and then. A area that I have never touched. I will be looking here to see what others do. ----------------Clarence

i had to weld the shoulder on mine so the lever its self would be 90 degrees out from the bike in stead of pointing towards the rear tire . one thing i found was it worked a lot easier when it was mounted on the engine then you have two hands to work with , i did have a clamp with soft jaws to hold the spring down but i cant for the life of me remember how i did it

I recently did one and it was not an easy task! I did it with a large vice, a deep socket and an open ended wrench to span the spring. And... some swearing. These were not the proper tools to do this job. I think if you had an extra set of hands it would not be as tough.

If you have a drill press and a vice for it you could use a socket to press the clip and retainer on at the same time. If you are still having problem next week I will post a picture when I put mine back together. I need to make a bushing and weld up the tabs yet.

I found a piece of tubing that was a good fit over the lever, and holding the lever in a vice I balanced the clip on top, held in place with the tubing. Then using a medium size hammer, just tapped it on.
If you can’t get this clip on, never ever try to fit the clip on the control shaft. It’s the same set up only smaller and the clip gets lost in the recesses of you shed forever.