The new TR1 engine - finishing the engine (part 27)

There really wasn't that much left to do on the engine. But it's the sum of those small jobs that can add up a lot.

First job was to install the clutch...

... a new oilseal for the oil-gallery to the head ...

... and all new dowels for the sidecovers. (Both sides use different ones.)

Then it was onto fixing the threads on the front cylinder head. For that matter I  drilled out the old buggered threads and then made some press-fit inserts on the lathe.

In order to drill the pilot holes for the new threads in the right spots, I made a drill jig (not shown) and then glued on the valve cover with super-glue.

And that's the result: Two-perfectly good threads. (And yes, it would have been smarter to do that BEFORE painting the heads.)

All new starter internals... this will come to haunt me a little later.

 Heads installed and the whole lot lifted off the bench.

One of the other things I always do when installing cams is to replace the original camshaft bushings with ball-bearings.

A word of warning: If you time the cams on XV engines, make sure you push onto the tensioner blade or you most likely end up one tooth off. Especially when you're not using a new camchain.

Swivel head valve adjusters.

New alternator plug as the old one was molten on one side.

At this point I started taking the TR1 apart, but more on that in the next post.

The new TR1 engine - more fixes, more paint and a frameswap (part 26)

After making some good progress on the engine earlier this week, there was one other thing that has been bugging me ever since I bought this bike. When I bought the bike I suspected that it had been in a crash at least at some point in its life. A few fork swaps and the fact that a rubber mallet was needed to install the upper frame in the lower frame mounts lead me to believe that the frame was buggered as well.

But before I could swan-dive into the frame swap, I decided that I had to tackled the heads first. Not very surprisingly I found a leaking valve cover. The reason it was leaking was due to a combination of really poorly executed thread repair or in other words: The threads were COMPLETELY on the proverbial p*ss.

Some fresh engine paint to make the heads look representable. 

Thanks to Torsten, who built himself a lil' "special" based on a TR1, I was given quite a load of stock parts for free. Amongst those parts was one of the nicest sets of TR1 fork legs I've ever gotten my dirty ol' paws on. But because I am a notoriously skeptical guy, I chucked them in the lathe and checked them for straightness.

... and both checked out to be perfectly straight. 

Next was trimming some no longer needed parts of the frame. I have a different breather setup than stock so that rear bit of pipe was no longer usefull to me.

The paint job was nothing to write home about, a coat of grey primer and then another one of satin black. I also painted the yokes, because they were looking a bit tatty and ever since I painted the lower one on the Turbo black I wanted to do the same on the mule.

The headstock bearings were due as well. Getting the old shells out was a dead easy job by adding some tacks with the MIG-gun and they almost fell out by themselves.

How to clamp two things, when you only have one free vise and one part should stay cool, while the other one is supposed to get hot. (There's a bolt clamped between the jaws to prevent the yoke from falling off. 

Then the old girl was brought inside into the operation room and I started to take her apart. Oh and yes, that front wheel really was this much out as can be seen in the picture below.

Also I've had charging issues for a long time on this bike, with one of the main reasons being this plug. It's been well fried since... no idea. Cleaned the contacts and filled it with di-electric grease and it should be good until the new engine goes in, which has a good plug.

During disassembly it has turned out, that one of the forklegs was slightly bent. (This isn't related to the crash the bike must have had before my time, because those are XS1100 forks I bought second hand...)

And that's the new frame installed and among many other things, the rear subframe bolts align correctly and the airfilter base isn't bent anymore... 

So you hear me going on, on just how badly bent the frame was, but then again, everybody can say that. See those brake pads?

As you can see, it's off by at least 1mm on the top. The funny thing is, you stop noticing it, when you drive it all the time only when you hop on another bike it become blatantly obvious that one of the two is vastly different.

And there she is back again in all it's crusty glory and I wouldn't want her in any other way...

... the old girl tracking straight is a nice bonus though. 😎

The new TR1 engine - fixing some older faults and headwork (part 25)

Sometimes you have to accept defeat and start moving on. The whole cylinder fixture was a nice idea, but it just shifts around too much. I have an idea, that I will give a try on the wrecked cylinder, but for now I want to crack on and finally reap the rewards of more than a year's work.

As you can see, I painted the bottom of the cylinder and took a very light cut (0.05mm) and it just wouldn't work. If you increased the RPM on the lathe whole lot would start to oscillate and twist itself into a pretzel.

Time to get back to work on the engine itself. I installed the lower camchain sprockets the wrong way round, i.e. front sprocket on the rear and rear sprocket on the front cylinder.

An M6 bolt, will make the perfect plug for keeping the sprockets under tension and this makes installation tons easier.

If you mark the two teeth adjacent to the "peek-hole" on the rotor with some paint and the single tooth that should go between them on the sprocket, it's totally doable to install the camshaft sprocket without removing the rotor. (Getting the pin out is impossible without turning the crank though.)

And for future reference: the front cylinder, which has its primary gear on the RIGHT is marked "R".

If you followed this blog for more than 5 minutes, you might have worked out, that I am not one massively into shiny paint and polished metal. It's an entirely different story, when valves are involved.

In order to achieve this finish (and lighten the inlet valves in the process), I put some old fuel hose over the valve stem and clamped each valve in my lathe and then went through 120, 220, 400 and 800 grit sandpaper always making sure that none of that touch the actual mating surface of valve and valve seat.

As you can probably make out in this picture, the inner valve springs are the softer Virago 1100 kind. They are being swapped in as the stock blue springs are way too heavy and actually overstrain the valve train and cause premature rocker and cam-failure.

If you have a rather limited understanding of port-work, it's best if you only touch up on obvious mistakes, i.e. casting flaws and ridges and steps in the ports. As these are going on an everyday engine and the overall port design is actually pretty sound, there's only very little that absolutely HAS TO BE touched in those larger ports.

As a matter of fact the only real area of concern I found on these was a step, where the original casting had been undercut to fit the valve seats and a few casting flashes on the inlet port sidewalls. Both were maybe 30 minutes work (per head) with a small flapping disk on a rotary tool.

In this picture you can see where I blended the seat into the port. Also notice the stock exhaust valve in the picture. 

And shiny bits installed. 

Next up: a frame and fork swap for unbent items (did you know forklegs don't usually jam in yokes - weird I tell thee...) and painting the cylinder heads silver.

The new TR1 engine - a cylinder machining fixture for the lathe (part 24)

Now even if you haven't read of any updates on the engine build, this doesn't mean there hasn't been a lot going on. Unfortunately a lot of head scratching, using rude language and production of scrap-metal was involved.

My initial idea was to machine the cylinders on my lathe by clamping the cylinder between two T-shaped hats and support it on the tail-stock.

In order for this to work at all, two more pieces of the puzzle were missing: an outside boring bar and a new toolpost. But first it was necessary to find out, if all of the surface was reachable within the saddle's traverse.

With that established, the next step was to cut the bar to shape and also clearance it on the bandsaw prior to milling it to shape.

Subsequently a toolpost was required that was as close to the centre-bolt as possible, retaining as much of the travel of the saddle.

As you can see in this last picture, it did work and the surface finish wasn't too bad, but unfortunately the whole lot was lacking rigidity. So the next stop will be to fit a bearing and axle to the rear plate in order to make the whole lot run a lot stiffer.

... and that's what I did. Earlier today, I went back and changed the backplate to accomodate a 6001 bearing (it's what I had from a gearbox rebuild) and a rather stiff axle clamp in the tailpost's drillchuck.

Little mishap on the lathe as I was shooting for 27.95mm, but ended up with 28.00, which meant the bearing was more of a sliding fit.

Eight punchmarks later and the bearing is set nicely. 

An old toolbit held in the drill chuck will serve as an axle.

So what's the verdict: This mod improved rigidity no end and if smart me hadn't made the chuck-sided disk without a taper but a flat surface the cylinder could be pressed against, the final runout would have been superior to the 0.10mm runout I ended up with as soon as I applied some force causing the whole workpiece to start wobbling.