I rode the R52 around and felt like I was getting used to it. One day, however, while I was riding the bike, something strange happened: it stopped moving. It happened while I was going up an incline. The motor kept running like nothing was up, and it shifted normally. A little inspection showed that the driveshaft was turning, too. Just no go at the rear wheel.

When I removed the final drive and driveshaft, I found that I could hold the shaft and turn the wheel drive dogs. Otherwise, it felt reasonably smooth and didn't make any bad noises.

When I took the unit in to Joe Groeger, he pointed out that the driveshaft wasn't being held in place securely, and then discovered that the double row ball bearing, which is the sole support for the shaft and the pinion gear, was starting to come apart. He took the project under advisement.

A few weeks later he had machined a new driveshaft, replaced the bearing, and had carefully shimmed it so that the pinion and the crown gear were properly meshed. But when I tried to put it back in the bike, the driveshaft was too short.

It so happened that Joe had another final drive project going on (for an R57) at the same time, and had made up two new driveshafts. When I told him about the problem, he wanted to see the whole thing, so I brought it in. Joe looked at it for a little while and then realized that the frame was bent. If you looked at the frame from above, the frame rails looked like this:
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Joe spent time on four successive days, along with me, Simon and Brent. He eventually fabricated a jig and heated the frame rails with a torch and then bent them using a hydraulic ram. The frame tubes have a lot of spring in them, and eventually he had to pull the rails more than an inch farther in than where they came to a rest. Now the frame rails look like:
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When Joe was finished with it, the final drive slide straight on and the driveshaft was the right length. It meshed flat with the Hardy disk at the transmission, and the brake shoes matched the brake drum on the end of the driveshaft perfectly. It also made it much easier to get the rear axle into place.

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I had also decided to buy a new exhaust system for the R52. The one that came with the bike leaked at every joint; the rear cap on one side was broken; it was made from very heavy steel, more like plumbing tubing; and it had been chromed when originally it would have been nickel plated.

For less than $300 I was able to purchase a complete header/muffler/tailpipe configuration with the cool looking vented fishtails from Leszek Lyzwinski of Oldtimer Garage in Poland. The upside was that he supplied the pieces quickly and they fit well. The downside was that they were very rough and needed a lot of work before they could go to the platers.

Joe did a lot of the work, and showed me how smooth and finished the metal had to be (very smooth, as a matter of fact) and then I spent about 20 hours myself smoothing out the metal and removing grinder and file marks. When they came back from the plater, they were gorgeous!