Saturday 4 March 2017

Everyday TR1 - an update and a bit of an outlook

This week was busy, unfortunately for you, not in a bike-sense. On my eighteen year old Volvo V70 station wagon one of the drive shaft bearings gave up and I had to improvise a bit to get it back on the road.

On the upside this meant the old Everyday TR1 had to be quite quickly pushed back into everyday service. (Hence the name!)

That being said, VM38 jetting is now spot on: #17.5 pilots, #145 mains and air-screws 1/2 turn open, which goes lovely with those equal-length 1 3/4" header-exhaust.


As the title suggests, there's also a bit of an outlook involved: A while ago I bought two BT1100 Bulldog engines for spares and as I sold of one of them, I took the following pictures. With a spare set of TR1-crankcases I plan to build an updated version of the current engine. The (planned) specs are going to be as follows:
  • BT1100 crank (lighter than the current XV1100 crank)
  • BT1100 cylinders (they are Nikasil plated) and pistons (more modern slipper design)
  • XV750 cylinder-heads (to bump up compression)
  • BT1100 transmission (because of the longer 5th gear)
  • 9 disk clutch

The used engine, parts donor:





The combustion chamber volume is even bigger than the stock TR1 heads, which lowers the compression ratio even further to a whopping 7.8:1. (Which is nice for turbo use, but useless on a n/a bike!)


Almost 80,000km on the clock and the hone marks are like new. I hope the second engine is as good as this one. 



Luckily the current XV1100-based engine is running nicely, so there's no real pressure to rush this job and I can take my time to build this engine right, to release its full potential.

Oh and if you have a set of XV700 heads for sale, please feel free to contact me and include some pictures of the heads.

3 comments:

  1. Mint Greg! Looking forward to this one! Why the XV heads? Smaller valves perhaps? ( just going off my experience with my old 883 Sportster, 1260 Wiseco big bore kit but apparently they run stronger with the original, smaller valve heads?) The old TR1 looks a real street sleeper, I like it!

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    1. Very close. XV750: the combustion chamber is smaller and pushes compression up to 10.2:1 instead of stock 8:1 and yes, slightly smaller valves, even though the casting is identical, which means, there is A LOT of meat for a bit of porting work. (The stock finish is nothing to write home about.)

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    2. Oh and thx a lot for the sleeper comment as that's exactly what the old girl should be.

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