La Macchina - working to make the old girl look good (part 2)

Underneath all the California 3 parts is a little Guzzi T3 that is trapped and just wants to be set free. With all the more hideous bits removed, a T5 fuel tank, a T3 California bench and a classic T3 read mudguard found its way onto the bike.

 

I mean, Guzzis are huge, but they also have this line from the seat to the tank to them:

 

Now there's nothing fundamentally wrong with the T5 tank, but when I found an 850T tank for the kind of price you can't say no to and it was red, actually it was R-O-S-S-O, one can't say no, right?

 Of course I also installed running boards and stock shift- and brake levers instead of the forward controls.

As usual, the uniball-joints were hopelessly worn and the whole gear-selector mechanics were completely loose and maladjusted. Luckily those joints are standard industrial Lego and are quickly replaced.
 

 The fuel tank needed a good rinse as it smelled of varnished petrol.

And while I waited, I got rid of the riser bars, trimmed the handlebar cover and put the bars in a more sensible position.

The 850T tank mounts by being hooked under two bushes on the headstock, which of course were missing.
 

Whilst these were missing, there were two mounting tabs for the Cali 3 tank underneath that were in the way of things. (They used to be where the shiny bits of frame are.)

On the subject of work on the frame, the rear mudguard had to be properly mounted, but as it came from a 1000SP it was missing the correct mounting locations and two more spacers, which I quickly made on the lathe.

In the meantime a new hazard-light switch arrived in the mail and guess what, this was the secret ingredient to make all the lights work. 

With some of the most pressing cosmetic issues being tackled and apparently even getting very close to being road legal, it was time to go from "running" to RUNNING.

The blued downpipes told me two things: First now the old girl was running properly on both pots and secondly the ignition is timed hopelessly late. Unfortunately it's impossible to see in the picture, but I adjusted the timing so the marks would be on the bottom end of the sight window giving it a bit more initial advance to help with things.

Then there's a huge difference between adjusting Guzzi carbs by ear and using some actual vacuum gauges on them.

I'll let the video speak for itself.

And with that, I can now turn towards making La Macchina road legal, so it can pass the inspection and get registered. Which means tidying up the whole electrics, making a seat mount, installing indicators and a tail-light and bleeding the brakes.

La Macchina - a Guzzi resurrection (part 1)

 So I bought a Guzzi. Not just any Guzzi, a really ugly one. A 1992 California 3 model, which had been (more or less) skillfully customised and then dropped at least once, as the left forward control was rather bent and so was the dashboard housing.

Matters of taste aside, under the rather voluptous rear mudguard one could clearly see a pair of Konis poke out, there was nothing obviously rusty and the last time it has run, it was mostly on the left side cylinder.

 

So the obvious question is: why buy a bike, which does not visually appeal, has been crashed and you appear to only have bad things to say about? Well, let me start with pointing out that even though I have never owned a Guzzi before, I worked on quite a lot of them already, from early V7 to LM5s and quite a few in between and there's one thing you have to know about them (unless you know already): All Tonti framed Guzzis are built equal. (Which is technically not entirely true, as for example a California 2 and 3 will have a different headstock, which makes it more stable in a straight line and lots and lots of brackets are in different spots, etc.) Thus, in theory and with a bit of effort you can build (almost) any Tonti-frame Guzzi out of another Guzzi. Knowing that they are essentially Lego, I wanted a California 3 for one primary reason:

 

That's right, this is the final (and in my opinion ultimate) evolution of the classic two valve Guzzi engine sporting 1000cc, but in the low(er) compression variant and with a heavy fly wheel, meaning relatively humble 70(-ish) horsepower on paper, but enough low end torque to make a dump truck blush. 

As delivery was part of the deal, I was in the interesting situation to have the paperwork and carbs (and a few other assorted small bits) with me, before the bike even arrived. 

It was rather apparent, that one of the reasons, why the last guy had given up, was because he had bought a handful of mismatched parts, when attempting to fix the carbs in order to get the bike back on the road. 

After picking up quite a few carb parts here and there and checking the carb housings for damage, it was pretty obvious that they would need a bit of love, but were totally salvageable. (Also Dellorto PHF 36es have to be some of the most simple motorcycle carbs to rebuild.)

With the carbs sorted, it was a matter of finding out whether the electrical side of things was willing to come alive as well. 

Anybody else thinking of Kubrick's Space Odyssey all of a sudden?

Install the carbs and improvise a fuel supply. 

And lastly the oldest trick in the book, run some fine sandpaper through the points to clean them up.

The result is hardly surprising.

So with a running (-ish) and charging Guzzi it was more than time to tackle the elephant in the room and address the optical situation.

Project Pickle - startup after all the body work (part 12)

 I had gotten the little Elephant to run right when I bought it, so it should be pretty straight forward, now after about half a year of it being parked to make it run again, right? RIGHT?

Just add fuel ...

 

... maybe a fresh fuel filter for good measure (that old tank wasn't swapped for no reason) ...

 

...and then this demonic device should make the magic happen ?

There was fuel in the tank and the battery fully charged and not much happened, I guess it was just time to do some extended maintenance. 

The old spark plugs actually didn't look too bad.

Old rotor had seen better days, but if I am honest, you can see the difference in build quality between an original Nippon Denso part and the current day knock off.

Neat spaghetti.

Technically speaking it was running (-ish), but it wouldn't do so very well, if I am honest. There was quite a bit of debris in the pre-chamber for the idle air...

... but most importantly lots of gunk (still) in the bottom of the float chamber. So out came my secret weapon of ultimate carb-cleaning lazyness: Liquid carb cleaner.

And the air-passages in the needle jet were completely blocked.

Couple minutes later most of the gunk has loosened up and is floating around.

Spotless. (With a bit of help of some strategically applied brake cleaner and some cotton swabs.)

Those couple of small specs did it.

Everything back together and the lil' Elephant fired straight up. 

But now the (mechanical) regulator was stuck in toast-the-battery-mode.

Luckily the regulator used on these alternators is found on a lot of Japanese vehicles from the early 1980ies, including various Toyota Land Cruisers and Corollas, so even my local parts shop could get a new one with relative ease.

Dre-XT-Stück - Cylinderheadboltthreadsshouldhavedonethemrightthefirsttime

It started like those stories always seem to start - when things are actually going well. Or to put a date on it, on May 24th, 2024 after enjoying a lovely little rideout on the old girl, the front left of the cylinder was covered in oil. 

So I did what any sensible person would do: clean it off, do nothing, hope for the best and get the inspection out of the way and then as the problem didn't magically solve itself, mumble something and park the old girl in the shed and ignore it for about half a year. Which is roughly when I realized that the old girl would come in a bit handy right about now.

Apparently stripping down the engine never goes quite without a bit of extra hassle, so the opportunity arose to fix all the remaining camshaft journal threads as well to improve my chances of making it through a full season without a rebuild of the engine. 

 

 

The piston has sucked in quite a bit of oil through the engine breather and was covered with a nice crust of burnt in oil.

... and this is from right after I rebuilt the engine and it felt a bit doughy.

 What looks like a fairly usable headbolt thread actually isn't and is the reason we're having all this fun now.

The solution will be the same as used on the my dad's XT500 4-valve engine - stainless steel M12-to-M8 adapters with an overall length of 27mm. Why not 30, you ask? Well because the stock threads are only 26mm long and with the steel inserts they should be very much strong enough. Also 25Nm on M12 is so far away from the maximum torque that is permissable in aluminium, I was actually going to use threadlock just to make sure they won't rattle loose. The other, quite valid point is: why not use a commercially available insert? In short: I tried Helicoil and they failed as they are too short and thus too weak and the top most is a commercial product, but again only 15mm long AND about half of it is slotted for installation, meaning it will most likely not be able to carry the full load.

 Installation is very straight forward, center on the old thread with a 6.5mm drill lock the table on the mill and clamp the cylinder down tight and go at it with a 10.5mm drill. 

That's not quite looking right, is it? It is not indeed. For some reason the guy in charge of tightening up the drill chuck didn't do his job very well and the drill came loose, wandering about and making a very interesting tapered 11.2 to 11.8mm hole. Not good. 

After some thinking, I decided to make an oversize insert as luckily I had started in the one corner that had plenty of meat around the hole and settled for M14x1.0.

Now the cheap thread die left a remarkably bad finish, which in hindsight was a good thing as it was rather unpleasant to thread in, which in turn most likely meant it would be rather unlikely to come out as well. (Or as someone else said: cross-threading is a kind of thread locker.)

Measured the thread depth and decided where to part it off, so it would end up flush or slightly below the headgasket surface.

Then it was just a matter of doing the other three WITHOUT cocking it up again. 

Basically do this until you're done and test it with a headbolt.

 Because the department of fun and games hinted at the fact that on more M6 thread was stripped and at least another one was feeling a bit dubious, I decided to install timeserts on all of them.

Obviously not without making another mistake: I didn't quite countersink the first one deep enough as I thought the chamfering tool had already bottomed out.
 

Having gotten this far and not being sure just how well that insert was seated, I decided AGAINST any attempt of getting it back out. Instead, I decided to work around the issue. 

First I put the cover back on, centered it with two additional bolts and tightened it down.

This left an imprint (hardly visible in the picture) on the boss.

 Which was then chamfered to provide the necessary clearance so the cover could be tightened all the way down. 

Gave the cylinder a quick hone and then wondered whether installing it without a base-gasket would improve the squish gap. For those interested: Nope, stuff gets too tight (again), between 0.45 and 0.55mm of the piston sitting low in the bore. With an admittedly very pliable base gasket I ended up with 0.70 to 0.80mm, which has to be added to the 1.00mm of the cometic head gasket. 

To quote a certain repair manual: Assembly is the reverse of disassembly, with the two most important things to bear in mind being that the cylinder base nuts need to be tightened to 40Nm (42 in the manual) and the headbolts to 25Nm. (29 in the manual which is just too high and the cause for many a stripped thread!)

 

 

First start was rather anti-climactic - not much smoke just a two or three kicks, pretty much standard procedure as if the old girl would have just been parked over the Winter.