I'd love to take a look at the '02 gears and compare them with the '01's. December 2001 Dirt Wheels, page 153: "The dogs on all the gears have also been increased for better durability." Now where does Dirt Wheels come up with information like that? Was this the rumored change during mid-model 2001 (VIN 7000)? We need a volunteer to open up their 2002 tranny. Who's up?

 

Fortin is a specialty transaxle shop, they build trick trannys for racing buggies, basically the old VW transaxles need allot of help to make them race worthy.

I have been told second hand from a yamaha source that the tranny breakage problem has been a very small %, less than 1% of all units out of 20,000 sold thats less than 200 problem cases...
Allot of the problems have apparently been guys ripping backwards in reverse then shifting up into forward whilst still rolling and crankin it on........ crunch munch...... doesn't take to much of that sort of abuse to screw the engagement dogs, then a dog detaches and goes on it's marry way smashing up bits inside.....

Granted there has been the odd case of no apparent abuse and the dogs on 4th have popped and taken out second gear.........

It would be very intersting to see a tranny gear set 01 and 02 back to back....

Kiwi