Topic: Repairing leaking CB550 shifter seal

[Justin_NJ]

I have an oil leak from my shifter, so I think it's a bad shifter seal.  I have my left side engine case off and it looks like the shifter seal is behind the sprocket.  I assume I need to remove the sprocket to remove the shifter seal - is that correct? 

Thanks,
Justin

[Glenn Stauffer]

The seal is where the shifter shaft enters the case.  You might as well just remove the sprocket to give yourself more room to get in there to remove the seal since removing the sprocket isn't really a big deal and you'll be able to examine all of the seals on that side of the engine to be sure of which one you need to replace.

There are quite a few good posts about replacing the shifter seal on the archives board.  This is one message thread on the subject:

http://glennstauffer.com/smf/index.php?topic=7866.0

--Glenn

[pmpski_1]

I just replaced this seal. I'm also going to replace the oil pump o-rings before I fire it up and test it.

I didn't remove the sprocket to replace the seal though. There was a recent thread the suggested using a handlebar to insert the new seal into it's proper place. That worked wonderfully for me. Of course, you need to have a handlebar laying around.

[Justin_NJ]

how do you remove the seal without removing the sprocket?  It looks to me like the sprocket and chain is covering part of the seal.

Here's a photo of my seal:

[pmpski_1]

I guess there's a slight difference between the earlier and later years. Mine is a 74. Here's a pic from the manual. In the picture it looks like there is a bit more clearance than on your model. I had both the chain and sprocket on the bike when I replaced this seal and I didn't run into clearance problems. It looks like you may need to remove the sprocket.