More black sludge

Removed the crankcase cover yesterday evening. Lot's of black sludge although the bearings seem to be running smooth. A good clean out with petrol and then a good oiling and then put it back together - good game!

The 350 lives!

Not a surprise I suppose, but I do love it when it starts 3rd or 4th kick after a complete strip and rebuild!

Black sludge

As I am nearing completion of the 350, time to see what the destroyed carbon disk has done to the inside of the 500. I removed the rear cylinders, and as you can see, there is a black sludge covering everything, so far there doesn't seem to be any play in the bearings but I will only know if there is damage once I have cleaned out the crank shaft...

On the good news front, the other pistons and barrels look in perfect condition!

Radiator Fixed

As mentioned above, I got the radiator fixed on the Daytona, I thought they would just solder it, but they used some high temp resin - a bit messy if you asked me, still the guy did give it a coat of black paint to cover it up!

Technical Update

I was waiting to receive some aluminium plate through the post as I want to make some reed spacers for the 350 , before attacking the 500, as I don't want the bits all over the place in the garage. I received my 8mm and 10mm plate, with new spark plugs for the Ducati (Champion L86C) these are non resistor type plugs to go with the non-resistor type plug caps I have installed - should make for more noise on people's tellies, but more spark, and better running - at least that's the hope. I swapped the old ones out NGK B7HS they were very light, so either I need to jet up or use a different heat range for the plugs!

I think the new ones are compatible with the B6HS so I just need to revise whether 6 is hotter or cooler and what that means - I always get confused when looking at these numbers!

So, using the aluminium plate, I used a gasket as a template and then cut the plate into appropriate size bits, rounded off the corners, and then drilled out the middle, then milled off the insides to bring the hole out to the correct size.

It takes an age to remove material with the miller, I don't know whether I am being too delicate or if I should cut more off at each sweep, anyway I am nearly finished with one, and will start the next one next week.

In the mean time, the Daytona sprang a leak from the radiator, you can't see it in the photo, but when it was hot it was heavily dripping, lucky it didn't happen in the Isle Of Man! I found a workshop in Fontaine which repairs radiators, so I removed it from the bike, and took it in this morning. The guy put the rad. under pressure, and in a water bath and you could see the problem straight away, I think I could have had a go myself, but anyway I suppose 50 Euros for a professional job is OK in this day and age, all the same expensive for a bit of solder! I will post a photo of the professional job tomorrow!

I have had to order two new carbon disks for the RG, along with the rivets and some thinner gaskets to avoid anything touching, Franco has also trimmed the disks down so their diameter is slightly smaller, to avoid any possibility of touching the exterior of the crankcase. Should be receiving these soon, but as mentioned above I still need to finish the 350 before completely stripping the 500 engine.

Heads on!

I put the barrels back on the 350 today, and the head, straightened out some of the radiator fins, and hooked it back up again. Trying to decide whether I machine up some spacers for the reed blocks (this is a pretty common modification), but I need to find some 10mm aluminium plate. We'll see.

Franco from Maranello is trying to understand what happened to my rotary disk, and the latest theory is that the disk was touching the exterior of the crankcase, I took the following photos for Franco, and you can see a gouge where the disk has worn away the aluminium, so I think the theory is probably as close as we are going to get. But does this mean there is too much play between the crank hub and the disk allowing it to rub, or maybe the disk was just too big!

 

 

 

Progress....

So, on the 350, the clutch cover is on, the kickstart installed, and my new Prox pistons are on... yummy.

The oil seals for the YPVS are proving to be a problem, they are just too big to get the valves back in the cylinders, I have looked around on the web, and apparently Yamaha have had issues with this, so maybe they gave me the wrong ones! I have invested another 3 quid in some o'rings from NK Racing and I will see if these are any better, but this is currently holding me up on the 350.

On the RG, I have been doing a lot of measuring and communication with Maranello Eng. to try and discover what would have caused the disk failure on Nr. 3. The front disks are fine (1 & 2), but the other rear cylinder disk is also heavily worn and marked, measuring up the clearance between the disk and the covers (on 2 & 4) in fact show that the clearance is not sufficient on Nr. 4. (only 0.15 mms), whereas minimum clearance should be 0.2mms. Nr. 2 was running at 0.25 mms, and there are no signs of wear. I also measured the axial play in between the disk edge and the cover as there is some movement between the disk hub and the crank, this proved to be pretty much the same on both cylinders, with almost 0.5mms on both cylinders. However when you push the disk to use the play on the crank the gap decreases by 0.1mms and 0.2mms down to 0.4mms  on Nr. 2 and 0.3mms on Nr. 4. Nothing conclusive here, but I should do the same with a new disk on Nr. 3 to see what results I get.

Worn disk on Cylinder 4

Disk to cover clearance should be min 0.2mms

measuring axial clearance disk to cover