Stripped threads

Well the crankcase is back on, the pistons on with new circlips and a couple of new washers on 2 of the cylinder bolts (2.31 euros a piece for a couple of steel washers!). The heads back on and torquing up the bolts and one of the last bolts strips the thread out of the barrel - shit... of with the head and then decision time. Do I remove the cylinder to drill out the hole and rethread? In the end laziness got the better of me and I drilled, threaded and screwed in the thread insert and broke off the fitting tab and then spent some minutes ensuring no swarf had gone anywhere near the engine internals.

The head went back on and then I managed to strip the other thread on cylinder 4... I don't know if it's the temperature, the age of the aluminium or just the non-stop dismantling that these engines were probably never designed to endure.

Anyway I did the second one in situ too and it went OK. And to cut a long story short the same thing happened on the front head, so I preempted and installed thread inserts in both holes on cylinder 2. I will refit tomorrow and try and fit the front head again to see if I can torque it up correctly. I decided to do both as I had to remove the cylinder as the exhaust valve cannot be removed with the cylinder in place!

Cleaning and reassembley

Nice having a couple of weeks at home over Xmas. Not much snow, none left in the garden!

Well the crankshafts removed and cleaned through with petrol and then oiled up with two stroke oil. A pain in the neck to clean of the gasket cement from last time.

Replace the cranks and line them up with the flywheel. Paint on some new gasket cement trying to avoid the cranks (!). Then fit the top case. No problems, although I seem to have an additional short bolt. The short ones fit inside the cylinders and are blind holes so it's important to get it right. Anyway it would seem I had made a mistake on my previous reassembley and sure enough I find a long bolt spare. Hmmmm shoot the mechanic!

Got new circlips coming so will have to wait until Christmas eve to fit pistons and the rest.

All the best for Xmas and the new year.

Crankcase off

No wonder I couldn't get the upper crankcase off, I had forgotten the 2 small 8mm bolts at the rear. Lucky I hadn't gone into attack mode as it could have been nasty. Anyway some small shit in there , nothing big but still happy to have done the job!

Engine in bits.....again

So feeling guilty and with some time on my hands, the heads, barrels and pistons are off. They all look ok (so they should after only 2 outings). I am glad I did the work though as there is a fair amount of fibre glass dust on the underside of piston nr.3. I will take the top crankcase off and remove the cranks today to see if anything else has been inhaled.

Pipes painted

Just finished applying the second coat of paint to my pipes. I bought the paint from Restom which is a French company specialising in tank lining products. It's gloss and high temperature resistant. Although they say  to apply directly to the bare metal I first used a rust inhibitor from Loctite, and then 2 coats of paint. Between coats I rubbed it down a bit, because the gloss does bring out every little imperfection. It looks ok wben dry, just hope it's effective.

It's getting cold...

Well despite, the 30-50cms of snow in the garden, nothing warms you more than a good old session in the garage!

This time I was removing bits from the RG in preparation for repairing them! The exhausts need a coat of paint, and as I bought some high temperature RESTOM paint, I am impatient to try it!

I bent the footrest holder flat again (wiv a hammer!) and also bent the gearlever back into shape, I turned off the end of the gear change lever so you can't even see it was damaged. I made up a couple of aluminium spacers for the footrest hanger and also one for the gear lever itself that should make it a bit less wobbley. I was quite pleased as I managed to "part-off" the spacers with my lathe, which I hadn't managed to succeed at as yet, a combination of lots of cutting/cooling fluid and regularly removing the tool from the metal to prevent the tool jamming in the metal.

It would appear that the fibre glass dust has penetrated inside the disk cover, and therefore inside the engine, I am not sure if I can be bothered to split the engine cases again, just for some fibre glass dust, I don't think it can be abrasive.... or maybe it is.....

Keeping Busy

Haven't written much recently, but I have been busy, trying to make space so I can start working on the RG in ernest. After Chris fell off the ducati during his visit, the right hand footrest needed rebrazing back on, and consequently painting, so that was done, and it is now all back together again, the Daytona has had a new front tyre, went for a Dunlop Sportsmart 2 this time around as they were cheaper and supposedly better than the Sportsmart 1 - we'll see, I was amazed that the previous tyre nearly did 10K kms, which is great for a sports tyre.

Jean-Luc's DT125 is still not running well, I cut up an old RD350 air filter, to make it fit the DT, but it starts OK, and then dies after a few seconds. Still some work to do there, I am begining to think it may not be just the carb. being dirty - maybe there is an electrical problem, aswell.... maybe....

The list of stuff to do on the race bikes is coming together :-

Clean out debris from accident remove rotary disk cover from Nr. 3 to see how far the shit got.
Repair fairings
Paint exhausts black
Fit MD pickup and re-adjust timing
On the 350 slacken off the damping on the gold valves (forks) I reckon about 3 turns off should do it!

Technical Update

First time out in the garage after Croix. I have received my new TM34 carb from MotoCarb in the UK, about the cheapest in Europe (that I know), and very quick service. There are some differences which are a little worrying - the bellmouth is a slightly different shape, and the needles are different, but in principle I will exchange over all my jets, needles etc.. from the old one so I am hoping there will not be any significant difference. The fuel spigot is a bigger diameter, which means a bigger diameter fuel pipe (good).

I purchased a new ignition controller from Borut which should be compatible with the Dent ignition pickup, I installed it in about 15 mins. mostly plug and play, except the old controller needed a sepearate wire for each coil whereas this one only needs one pair of wires (standard). Hopefully I can test this with the Dent pickup sooner rather than later.

Of course I will need to think about cleaning out he crap in the rotary valves on Cylinder 3 and also think about what to do with the fairing. I picked up some cheap lever replacements in the web, which I'll pick up from the UK in a couple of weeks.

Croix-en-Ternois

Spent the weekend filling and repainting the right fairing with some rattle cans and fibreglass filler, in the end I was pretty pleased with the result, although it would need some varnish to have the same finish. Anyway no time for that, I rebalanced the carbs after having shortened the throttle cable by about 3 mms, I did it in situ which isn't easy as I didn't want to burn the fairing or instruments, but I managed OK.

So the plan was to attend the weekend at C-en-T circuit as it was the last ProClassic weekend of the year, plus Philippe was putting on some parade lap sessions, so thought I would see our buddies and have some track time aswell!

We travelled up, with just the 500 in the lorry, and on the Thursday evening, stayed in Troyes over night and then finished the journey on Friday morning arriving at the circuit just before midday.

I booked in for some free practise in the afternoon and setup up camp. The first session with the needles in position 2 from the top was (I think) better, and the bike was lifting the front in the first 3 gears (off the hairpin), not surprising as I run 14/40 front/rear sprockets, and I still only just needed 6th gear along the straight! I was able to measure my acceleration and top speed with some of the GSXR's and I am not bad, still missing a little for the top boys, but I think pretty competitive for the middle runners.

I didn't change anything for the second of third sessions, although I could try lifting the needles one more clip position as I am still suffering from a huge hole (less than Magny-Cours - maybe).

Anyway in the third session I was being overtaken by a couple of fast guys on the right hand side, and as I drifted out to the left to prepare for the next right hand bend, someone came past on my left and clipped me, taking me down! I just had the chance to see his bike as I fell. Not the fastest part of the circuit but probably at 80-100km per hour, I slid down the track and then as I left the track I did multiple head over heels. I got the feeling that I had stopped but still kept going, finishing in the gravel trap. The bike ended up further into the gravel having slid all the way on the left side.

Got ambulanced back to the medical centre, all my fingers were really painful, and I had a sore shoulder and had burned a hole in my knee where my leathers had worn through. I felt quite sick for a bit, and so I got shipped to the local clinic to be checked out. My right middle finger was broken (last phalanxe) and the rest was just bruised (luckily). My head had scuffed the deck as the visor was scratched but nothing serious.

I got back to the circuit later that evening, to look at the bike. Most of the damage was to the left hand fairing which had worn down the top (nr3) carb finishing by splitting the bell mouth, so it is basically dead. The top of the fairing was lightly scratched and the clutch lever and cable broken. The seat unit suffered a few scrapes and some gravel rash!

Not fixable for the rest of the weekend, and anyway with the splint they put on my finger neither was the pilot!

Lots of work for the winter!

Magny-Cours Bol d'Or Classic

So back from the weekend at Magny-Cours at the Bol d'Or Classic weekend. Libby and I were signed up for the parade laps. Six sessions, 2 per day on the Friday, Saturday and Sunday. We got there around 11:00 am on the Friday, and got straight to the sign-in desk, as our first session was at 13:30. The bikes also had to go through a rudimentary scrutineering, with our equipment. All that was done, and the stress was increasing (for Libby) this was her first time at a big event, and the first time at Magny-Cours. She was now managing to start the bike on her own, so I think she less anxious about sitting on the pre-grid.

The first session was great, I stayed with Lib for the first lap - trying to show her the way around. There were at least 3 other RG 500 in the session, but I was the only one really opening up! The bike was great, with really nice power above 7.5K all the way through to about 11K. I wasn't pushing it in the first laps as I had taken a complete guess at the main jet sizes (260 all round). I was really careful to choke the bike at the braking for Adelaide as the end of biggest straight. I cut the igntion at the end of the session to try and preserve some colour on the plugs, which turned out to be a really nice chocolate brown, although the left cylinders were slightly lighter than the right side - don't know why? Chris (bruv.) arrived in the afternoon, and we went out for the second session at the end of the afternoon, and had a great time, I started to really open the RG up, as the jetting was near enough right. Still a big hole before 7.5K I will try to raise the needles for the next session. I had put on a second hand rear Pirelli SuperCorsa I had bought off ebay, which I completely forgot, so it was operating OK. The temperature hung around 71 degrees centigrade which I was well pleased with, although I am not sure if this is a result of the new radiater cap or because of something else - that is the problem of changing loads of stuff at once. In the evening the classic and post classic bikes were out for qualification for the Bol d'Or, and we were surprised to find some of our mates from ProClassic, so we followed with interest the qualification sessions

Quite a good event with a jumble and some professional stands (I bought some new ear plugs - 18 Euros so I hope they are good). I also found some rubber caps for some brake bleed nipples that I was missing. There were also some interesting clubs there, with Ural side cars, Z900 club etc..

Saturday we had another two sessions, unfortunately I lost the front end going into Estoril, which is a long fast right hander leading onto the Golf straight. I don't know why, maybe some oil on the track, I was in a higher gear than normal so perhaps I didn't have enough drive going into the bend, anyway I found myself on my back looking at the bike sliding away into the gravel trap!

After a brief trip in the breakdown truck back to the pits, I inspected the bike, and too my relief there was not much damage. The right hand side fairing was scraped, the carbon air deflector had worn through, and one carb was a little scraped. The main damage was taken on the footrest and clipon, and brake lever which had snapped. The worst was trying to clear out all the gravel - it gets in everywhere, I recovered a couple of stones from in the bellmouths, but the rotary valves were all OK, and the engine turned over nice and smooth by hand.

I replace the brake lever, and the footrest, bodged some tape over the fairing holes, stuck the air deflector back on and we were ready to go out again!

Libby didn't want to go out in the last session, so I took the 350 out, which was good fun, although I really need to back off the gold valves a couple of turns as the front end chatters considerabley.

With night falling, the rain started, and we watched the Bol d'Or first round race, which was wet to say the least - shame!

We have rain all night, and we were due out at 8:30, but we both decided to stay in bed! The rain continued into the morning, and we decided to abandon ship. We packed up everything in the wet, and made our way home!

Now the carbs are setup for (2 notch from the top) for C-en-T in a weeks time, so I will test them there!

Technical Update - Pickup, fairing molds etc...

Been busy in the garage again, trying to get the RG started. Since installing my Dent pickup I have only managed to start it once - after much sweating on the kickstart!  And even then it didn't run right. Mark actually replied to my email, although just reassuring me that it would work - if the gap was right. I will wait 'til after the Magny-Cours weekend before playing with it again. He didn't tell me what the gap should be, but discussions on the Gamma list would lead me to testing with the plugs out and trying different gaps, until I can get a decent signal from it. Have re-installed the original one which fired the bike first time, I quickly checked the carbs (balance), and adjusted the tickover slightly - I will need to do this again before packing the bike in the van.


I need to remember to switch ignition programs.....

As far as the molds are going I couldn't remove the clay plugs without damaging them, so I just soaked them in water, and they came out as liquid mud! The molds are OK... still a few bubbles and stuff but they are alright for a first go - I am sure I will have to create some more.

Anyway you can see them here with 2 layers of carbon weave which will have to be trimmed off this evening and then I need to think about how I am going to attach them to the fairing.

Update

Libby has been helping me make a plug for molding some glass fibre for the carb covers, I took a couple of photos but they are on the other camera. The clay had got frosted in the winter, so it was really crumbley which didn't really help, but she managed a pretty good basic shape which will have to be smoothed as it dries. From the plug I will make a glass fibre mold, from which I can make the final pieces either in cardon or glass, depending on what I have to hand.

I used an old car battery, to power up the ignition unit, and configure the timing, I have no expertise in this at all, so I tried to gather all information from tuned Rg's on the web, and have gone for an intermediate ignition curve, neither too advanced or too radicale but I am sure I will feel a difference one way or another.

I went for the mauve/reddy one in the middle, with 12 points, I also adjusted the static timing to 30 degrees, as I have the dent advancer installed.

Fairing modifications

So, the carbs are on and functional (we will test later!). The next big task is to modify the fairing so that the carbs can breathe. Carbs 1 & 2 are about 2 cms away from the fairing sides, so probably OK, but the top ones i.e. 3 & 4 are touching the fairing, so will have to be liberated!

I used my best judgement to centre the holes and then drilled with a circular (plaster board) drill to make the big holes the same size as the bell mouths. Because the carb 3 is angled up, it is in a slightly different place than the carb Nr. 4. so not symetrical....

So now I have all carbs that can breathe, the question now is how do I protect the bell mouths from low pressure zones created as the bike moves along, I would like to get some still/protected air around the bell mouth area if possible.

All suggestions of putting a yogurt pot over the end will be deleted immediately!

Next job - see if she starts and program the ignition to enable easy starting and good running.

Just for the record the carbs are setup with 280/290s front/back. They originally came with 240's in them.

Carb cables on

Really frustrating trying to get the throttle cables the right length. Despite having nearly finished I had to shorten all the cables by about a centimetre grrr... just takes so much time. I used the "old" throttle cable to connect the 4 choke cables to the handlebar mounted lever.

The choke cable is now done and it works, but unfortunately I still need to tune tnhe throttle cable!

Weekend at Ledenon

I had to adandon the idea of getting the RG ready for the track weekend at Ledenon, with the modifications to the fairing necessary to make way for the carbs to breathe, so Libby and I went down to Ledenon with just the RD350 in the van. The primary goal of the weekend was to give Libby a go at the circuit, so she wouldn't be too shocked with the speed of things at Magny Cours later in September.

I took the bike out first to check things were running OK, and after a break of over 8 months it was really great to get back on the track! The bike was running OK. Libby took the bike around the car park to get used to the position and then headed out for her very first track experience! Strange bike, unknown circuit - but she didn't bottle it - respect to her!

Unfortunately the bike let her down as the gear lever decided to part ways with the bike, so after just 2 laps her initial experience was over, and of course the mechanic needed a good bollucking - where is he....can't find the bugger....

After replacing the gear lever (the pinch bolt had fallen out), Libby headed out for the second attempt! This time she managed to do a full 20 mins, and managed to bring the bike and herself home saftely. She didn't break any records but had a good time although was somewhat impressed by the rapidity of her track companions, and the speed of everything. It was in fact nearly an ideal weekend as most of the time we were sharing the track with only about 10 or so other bikes - great for beginners!

I don't think Libby is going to apply for her license this coming year, but all respect to her for having tried it - you don't know until you try and of course invaluable experience of the bike she will be riding at Magny Cours and also track time!

I had a total of 5 sessions - 3 Saturday  and 2 Sunday morning, I was running times that were very acceptable - nearly up to PB. The good news is the modifications to the fork, made the front end much stiffer, although still reacted well to bumps, the bad news I suffered some chattering going through the "Triple Gauche" which was very off putting, and I think the action plan would be to back off the gold valves a smidgen! Didn't really notice any difference in engine acceleration due to the lightened flywheel, but it was running well, so maybe it did make a difference.

By the end of the fifth session, the power valve was making a strange noise and it seems to be badly aligned, so I will have to adjust it for September (our next outing).

I have finished (almost) making the carb cables for the new carbs. In fact I was going to buy a load of nipples and make them up with bicycle gear cables, but Trialsbits.co.uk were selling a throttle DIY kit with enough stuff to build at least 8 cables, so I went for that as it was only 30 quid.

So I am almost ready to start the bike again, and then attack the fairing, with the dremel! I am thinking as I can't use the lower fairing brackets (due to the carbs) I will use the old fairing sides (which didn't use the brackets), and just cut a big chunk of fairing out where the bellmouths now sit, and then build a bulge with some of my left over carbon fibre. We'll see, the plan hasn't yet completely hatched in my mind!

Wedge finished

Had fun this morning setting up the 4 jaw chuck on the lathe in order to bore the hole in my wedge for Nr. 3 carb. Worked out OK although I need to buy a dial gauge in order to do things properly, managed to drill the initial hole and then, used the boring tool to make it bigger. It was a real pain to get it to the correct height in order to have a cutting edge without the body of the tool hitting the periphery of the hole.

Anyway that is fitted and the carb misses the rotor by about 2 mms so I think that is job done!

The disappointment of the day is that there is no way that the standard fairing will fit, on carbs 1 and 2 the carbs won't even fit with the fairing brackets in place. I need to think about how i can modify the fairing to fit!

Anyway onto the cable lengths for the new carbs!

Weekend's work

Yeeeeeee... I got my valves on Saturday morning! They look great in carbon and nice and light compared with the steel ones. Jerome forgot to send the gaskets though, but fortunately the standard gaskets gave the appropriate clearance between the covers and the valve - 0.2mm I was told it needs to be a "good" 0.2mm and it was every valve measuring around 0.25mm, so happy with that.

I did have to trim the gaskets as they were made for standard covers and valves.

While I was torquing down the front cylinder head one of the M6 bolts stripped the thread in the cylinder, so I had to remove the head, Nr.1 cylinder and fit a helicoil on the cylinder, this was only my second time using my kit, but I was certainly glad I had purchased it otherwise I would have been stuck! I was only mildly sweating as I took the portable drill to my cylinder - one false move and game over!

It worked fine, although I couldn't remove the cylinder stud so had to use a spanner to turn the tap, the helicoil went in well, although when I came to break the tab off it just bent over and I took five minutes to remove it from the head. So cylinder and head back on and torqued up!

I had to make a bracket for the fairing lowers, which was missing from the main fairing brackets, and the biggest job of the weekend was making a "wedge" to angle the Nr.3 carb up on the milling machine.

After much thought I used the Mark Dent wedge (which didn't fit my covers due to a different screw to screw hole measurement) to give me the good angle. I placed my bit of ally on top of the MD wedge, and then I had to try and hold the whole thing in place. I managed to get it solidly installed on the bed of the mill, then I proceeded to remove material from the ally, having to avoid my fixing points. This worked OK, and once I was down to 1mm of material on the top side, I removed the piece and then had to trim off the excess material, with my dremel using the cutter. I am reasonabley pleased with the result, although I need to spend some time smartening it up! Next I need to fit my 4 jaw chuck and bore the hole int he middle! The MD wedge is on the right.

The next big job will be making the cables for the carbs, I tested the standard cables on the bigger carbs and they are missing between one and two centimetres - Grrrrrr! I hope I can find the nipples I used on the RD350 when I was messing with the VM34's!

Still waiting for rotary disks...

Just a quickie. Jerome at Classic Racing didn't have the correct rivetting tool to setup the carbon disks after having cut them to the new profile, so he had to buy the correct tool, so another 5 days wasted. I am still waiting to hear from him, hopefully in time for Ledenon on the 10/11th August.

I still need to :-

1. Align the new fairing and drill the fixing holes and fit some fasteners
2. Continue to finish the engine (I am up to the barrels) and new some (ordered) O'rings to fit the heads and finish the engine.
3. Setup the new carbs dependant on getting the rotary disks (going for 280/290 front/back initially)
4. Fit the new carbs with hopefully standard cables and springs
5. Fit the new choke to handlebar...
6. Make a wedge to lift the Nr. 3 carb away from the rotor
7. Setup the zeeltronic ignition to retard the startup timing.

Looking dodgy with all that to do, but will try and get it finished!

Engine re-assembley

So, yesterday evening I got the crankcase upper back on and also the cylinders. A couple of tips for the future. I used one of Libby's (old) paint brushes to apply the very fluid gasket cement on the crankcase lower - this worked really well - much cleaner than the last time I did it on the upper. Although must be sure to wipe away any traces of oil otherwise it doesn't stick well.

Before putting the crankcase on, I set about trying to remember which bolts went where on the crankcase :-

It took me some time, as I hadn't taken a photo coz I thought I knew it !

I thought I would make a readable picture to print out for the next time

 

Torqued up everything as per manual, and then set about the pistons and cylinders. The pistons had a bit of carbon build up which I tried scraping off, but seemed to be doing more damage with the scraping than leaving the carbon - so it got left! Pistons 3 and 4 show small signs of detonation, but I consider OK for the moment, I didn't fit new rings as they all seemed good!

The cylinders all went on without too much hassle, but again lack of photos slowed me down.

You need to fit the exhaust valve on cylinder 2 before fitting the cylinder - it is impossible afterwards, so I thought I would quickly identify which exhaust valve went where.... doh... The valve cables are number 1-4, which for a moment I confused with cylinder numbering..... After some thought and a lot of looking around in the manul etc. I found the following to be true :-

The cables 1 & 2 are the short ones and connect to cylinder 4
The cables 3 & 4 are the long ones that connect to cylinder 2
The pulley with the stop on it goes on cylinder 4
You need to install the valve in cylinder 2 before installing the cylinder (or you have to move the engine to get it in).

The little ridges in the valves go on the piston side.

Plus the rear pulley should have the "stop" protrusion on it - part 16 on the below diagram :

And the cover of the rear pulley should have the small angle covering the "stop" protrusion.
To make things easy all the alignment marks on the pulleys and on the servo motor should be aligned, then you know all the valves are open and they should be setup like this.

Unfortunately I can not get further because my tuner didn't keep the little O'rings on the cylinder bolts, so I had to order more from Suzuki, I will get them at the end of the week along with the Carbon rotary valves, which have now been sent - thanks Jerome!

Jobs still to be done :-
1/. Fabricate another wedge
2/. Check carbon valve clearance and adjust with smaller gaskets as necessary (a big 0.2 mms clearance is necessary)

Off to a wedding tomorrow, more news next week.

Engine Work done

Went back to Nantes on Friday to pickup my crankcase and other bits. The guy seems to have done a pretty good job at opening the inlet ports they are all very smooth, and fit the inner disk covers nicely, he also cleaned up and mated the cylinders to the crankcase which was good - all round I am pretty pleased although it was more expensive than I had planned!

You can see in the photos the new rotary disk inners and outers (Maranello Engineering), which look great quality, but Franco couldn't get the carbon disks to my guy in time, so I came away without the carbon rotary disks which Jerome will send me after having cut them to keep the same valve timing as Mark Dent had originally tuned in on the steel ones.

I have to alter the wedge (I bought from Performance Fabrications) because firstly it no longer fits the bolt to bolt width of the new covers, but also the inlet port doesn't line up very well - I will try to make one on my milling machine !

So I now have to URGENTLY get everything together as I only have a few days working at it before our holiday in the UK, and then in the South of France for a few days, in order to be ready for track day time at Ledenon on the 10/11th August.