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.