When I was putting the 22 into the garage for the winter, I couldn’t back it up my very low slope driveway. I had a bunch of things to do before I could get into it to find out what was up. I took the transmission cover off today and I can’t see anything wrong. The triple gears look fine, the drum shows no sign of heating or cracking, and what little I can see of the gear on the drum looks ok. It has Kevlar bands. The only thing I can think of is that the band needs to be tightened. The reverse has always been loud. But maybe that was a result of band slipping?
Anyone have any other things I can check?
Sadly, it’s has been down to -22 and snowed 2-3 feet over the last week, so I won’t be able to test drive it till spring.
Follow up on no reverse
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Reno Speedster
Topic author - Posts: 625
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Humblej
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Re: Follow up on no reverse
The amount of pedal travel should indicate if the band is too loose.
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Wayne Sheldon
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Re: Follow up on no reverse
Just couple quick thoughts? Is it possible the pedal is hanging up on the floorboards preventing it from tightening the band enough? Another possible? The cam ramps on the pedal shaft, the one on the pedal itself and the one that bolts onto the hogshead, if badly worn (doesn't take too much wear to be too much!) will run out of lift before the pedal can reach the floor.
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Russ_Furstnow
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Re: Follow up on no reverse
I have a friend that had the same trouble with his speedster. All of a sudden, he had no reverse at all! We took the engine out of the car, checked the transmission and found that the rivets that attach the drum to the gear on reverse drum had sheared. The only solution was to re-rivet the drum to the gear or install a better reverse drum with the gear. While the repair took only one day, it was quite labor intensive, BUT he had reverse when we were done. I hope this helps, Russ Furstnow
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speedytinc
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Re: Follow up on no reverse
That's got to be the rarest of rare transmission failures.Russ_Furstnow wrote: ↑Mon Jan 12, 2026 9:48 amI have a friend that had the same trouble with his speedster. All of a sudden, he had no reverse at all! We took the engine out of the car, checked the transmission and found that the rivets that attach the drum to the gear on reverse drum had sheared. The only solution was to re-rivet the drum to the gear or install a better reverse drum with the gear. While the repair took only one day, it was quite labor intensive, BUT he had reverse when we were done. I hope this helps, Russ Furstnow
How does one abuse a transmission so much to shear those rivets? Heavy use as the engine brake? Nah. Was the gear changed with a really poor rivet job? Maybe. I don't recall ever seeing such a drum failure.
My first thought after reading the OP was only the rivets shearing could create a total reverse loss, so I dismissed the thought. Could never happen.
Got to be way under adjusted or pedal hitting the HH before adequate engagement.
Thinking about it now, a more plausible failure than rev gear rivet failure would be early triple gear rivets shearing(that was a fairly common event), but, low would also have failed.
Given a rev drum failure possibility, I would look @ the condition of the rivets with a bore scope if other checks are fruitless.