The new TR1 motor - overhauling an XV1100 crank (part 10)

With the engine cases being pretty well prepared, it was about time to build a decent crank for the new engine. To be fair, it went a lot smoother than anticipated. Probably mostly because it was dead cold that day.

As a start, I clamped the XV1100 crankshaft into the vice (but using soft jaws - some old ally strips).

Then I decided that I needed a tool to drive on the bearing onto the crank, which was a bit of 50mm stainless tube, beefed up with some off-cut to give it a bit more wall-thickness. 

On the other side, I welded on a big washer to give it a bit more rigidity.

Now while I was doing all of this, I've put a pot with a bit of fresh engine oil on a hotplate and heated it up until it started to bubble.

You won't believe the next step: Took the bearing out of the oil, held it with a rag and my thick welding gloves and simply pushed it onto the crank just with normal finger pressure. That's it, no fancy tools, nothing.

The oil-pump gear fought me all the way, for a some reason (stupidity, I guess), I washed it off with brake clean after heating it up in oil, which cooled it down too far (and the crank had heated up quite a bit with that big hot bearing sitting on there), which meant I had to build a second tool, following the same principle as above, but with 40mm inner diameter and then push it home using some spacers I had still lying around.

So that's the crank ready for installation. Conrods are next. 😏

The new TR1 motor - installing an oil-pressure switch (part 9)

As I was waiting today for someone to visit me in my shop, I took the chance and finally drilled and tapped the cases in M10x1.0 for a standard VW 0.9Bar opener oil-pressure switch. Nothing fancy really, just make sure you drill straight into the case. Other than that...

Pre-drilled 6mm.

With a drill guide

Drilled it out to 9mm.

Tapped it and installed the sender.

Next step will be to take off the engine covers, remove the rotor and the cylinders/heads and then get into the meat of it and make some decent progress (finally).

The new TR1 motor - bolt sizes (part 8)

This post is equally as much a bit of service towards my readers as it is to myself as I couldn't find a list or schematic, which clearly explained which bolts are supposed to go where in the covers.

The standard length is M6x25 and the longer ones (marked in red) are M6x40.

yellow: M6x16, blue: M6x48 but with M8-shaft

The starter solenoid cover is held on with one M6x16, one M6x25 and one M6x70.

The clutch adjuster cover is held on with one M6x16 and one M6x55.

I know this is probably a somewhat unexciting post, but if you like me tried to work out which bolt goes where and what size/length it is, this may eventually come in handy.

The new TR1 motor - sandblasting (part 7)

Before I could gest started on sandblasting, there was one more plug I had to machine. Namely one going over the oil-gallery union bolt. Fairly straight forward job of knocking up a 25mm long spacer with a 12mm hole in the middle.

The only before picture I took, giving you a rough idea of the condition the cases were in.

Two shots taken when the engine was in the cabinet. And those who know my workshop will hardly believe me, when I say, the engine *JUST* fitted in.

A little before and after (left and right).

And that's what the cases looked like after blasting. New isn't remotely doing it justice. They came out absolutely stunning.

Is it a simple job? Technically yes, but what you see here is five hours of work to get it as clean as I wanted it to. Additionally if you want an easy life, you have to paint the cases afterwards as the surface finish is very rough and will develop some patina rather quickly.

The new TR1 motor - breaking stuff (part 6)

A friend once said: "There's no such thing as a free lunch" and "the best deals often come at some cost". Well, the TR1 cases are basically really nice (cosmetics aside), but had a sheared off bolt in one of the holes. Not the end of the world as you'd surely agree, but to be fair, I f*cked that job up pretty good. Which in turn gave me the opportunity for some lathe work. But let's do this chronologically.

Step one: You have a starter motor fixing bolt (M6) sheared off cleanly in a hole.

Left hand drill to the rescue. (Why I didn't try welding something on first is beyond me, guess I just love to suffer some times...)

Try heating up the engine cases before drilling in the faint hope that the left-hand drill will bite and just pull it out. 

More heat.

Mooooooooore heeeeaaat! 

Nope, didn't work, drill wandered off and then drilled the hole out oversized. Heli-coiled it, only to find out, I just set everything up for an M8-helicoil.

 Wound the coil out, put on my brain cap and machined a plug to go into the hole.

Polished the plug to 0.02 to 0.05mm oversize, with a slight taper on one side.

Test fit. 

Heated the cases to spit-hot. 

Put the plug in and gave it two good whacks with the ol' repair-hammer and there you have it. 

Second thing I wanted to do was to make a drill-jig for installing the oil-pressure sensor. As the last one was slightly off center, I decided to make an even more advanced jig with a little locating lip.

That's the boss that Yamaha kindly cast into the cases, but then decided never to use. It's not present on newer (e.g. Virago 1100) cases. 

And there you have it. 

It'll be a bit until you actually see this one in action, as the order of posts on the blog doesn't exactly depict the order of events anymore, i.e. this happened before all the cleaning and sandblasting.

The new TR1 motor - preparing everything for sandblasting (part 5)

Now as you may have seen in the last post, the paint on the engine cases was pretty chewed up in some places. Normally I wouldn't mind that (much), but in this particular case, I really want to build that engine once, do it right and then basically run it for the next few years and fiddle around with the two other TR1-engines in my workshop. Mainly because I saw what constantly taking stuff apart and putting it back together does to the engine.Which is also why this engine has been dubbed "the mule".

Generally I wouldn't recommend sandblasting engine cases unless all bearings are out and then you'd still have a nightmarish job of getting out all the left-over blasting media. The other way (in theory) is to really seal off the engine, which can only be done if you have an engine like this Yamaha XV engine that hasn't got any built in breathers in the cases and only in covers attached to the cylinder heads.

Step one was to knock up a substitute for the starter motor on the lathe.

Then it was time to clean up all the mating surfaces and whilst doing that chase all threads on the engine block. Why? Because there's always some old crud in there, which will kill the threads and bolts in the long run and prevent you from torquing stuff down correctly. 

As you can see, instead of gaskets engine silicone has been used to glue on cylinders and heads (both of which are sacrifical ones) to the cases. Those extra 5 Euros in gasket goo are well spent, if no blasting grit makes it into the engine. As you can also see in the picture below: Both heads sport rear cam-gear covers as they don't have a breather hole. 

Same story on the other side, clean up all the mating surfaces, run a tap through all the threads... What you see here is pretty much the end of approx. 10hrs of prep-work.

As there's not all gearbox components installed (e.g. no clutch pushrod), the clutch actuator had to be secured to the cover by other means. 

You know stuff's getting serious, when you fill your inlet ports with expanding foam. (Don't worry, those heads are complete junk... as somebody hacked into the combustion chamber... caveman style.)

The part that is still missing here, there's one breather that still needs to be addressed and that's the gearbox output shaft, as that's the gearbox'es breather and has to be plugged up.