New Torque arm

Well the bike is pretty much back together now, and the snow is falling, I now have to attack the hardest part of my rebuild. I am intending to make air boxes out of the fairing sides so that I can protect the carbs somewhat, the idea would be to build new fairing stays on the side of the bike, plus at the headstock. I am counting on a standard fairing having enough (to be checked) lateral space to allow me to add a carbon sheet to form an air box in each fairing half, then I would need to decide whether or not to pressurize them, although for the moment that would seem too complicated, as this would potentially need a fuel pump (to equalize the pressure) and then the jetting would be a nightmare as air flow would increase with speed, so I will probably look to get just a clean cool supply of air - venting next to the tank.

Anyway that's the theory, I have also heard that a 916 fairing gives a modern look, and lots of side space!

Anyway in the mean time, a new rear brake torque arm to allow clearance for the exhausts, and also will allow me to jack up the rear a couple of centimetres without hitting the exhausts!

Happy Xmas!

Inner valve covers installed

Installed the rotary valve inner covers yesterday evening. I used the thinnest gaskets (0.1mm) on the rear cylinders (where I had seen wear on the disk), and the thicker gaskets (0.2mm) on the front cylinders (no apparent wear). I tested the clearance of a brand new hub and an "old" hub (don't forget old hub has only 2-3 weekends running). Difficult to describe the play, so I made a quick video with an old and new hub comparison - I don't really see any difference.



I also measured the gap between a new disk and the crankcase, and this was consistently 0.3 mms on each different cylinder.

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

Weekend work

Busy weekend on the bikes :-
Changed the petrol filter and the oil and filter on the Daytona (70K service).

The petrol filter has made a hell of a difference, the bike is much smoother, I opened the old filter and it was filthy - I also cleaned the tea bag in the tank, and that had loads of hairy bits on it, so that's good for another few kms. I used a HIFLO oil filter Nr. 204 on the Daytona, it should be a 191, but doesn't seem to be much different in size, so I am going with it. Used Castrol Power 1 Racing 10W50 oil. The petrol filter came from BMW (it's the same as for the K series BM's - still cost over 20 Euros, and I should be able to find it cheaper!).

Franco from Maranello Engineering wanted me to check the other carbon disks on the RG, to check for any cracks, I removed the other LHS disk, and although there are some very small chips in the leading edge, it looks OK. Franco reckons it may be because they were cut, that the centre split off, but I don't think we will ever know, although he has recommended that I move to a 0.3 mms clearance to be safe. I will be using the standard disks with a shorter open duration to see if I can get back some mid-range! These are Maranello products with screw up hubs and 0.9 thickness carbon disks, although the new ones are using a new material - prototype disks with a bigger carbon weave.

I replaced the clutch on the 350, no problems, next will be the cylinders etc....

I worked on the Ducati a bit too :-
Replaced the carb springs with lighter ones
Replaced the plug caps with resistor less ones
Dropped the bike about 12mm through the fork yokes, to improve front end turn-in

Crankcase together

I purchased some loctite 641, to fix the rhs bearing in place (the one that had rotated). I only put it on the lower crankcase, so hopefully I will be able to remove it at a later date. Torqued the 16 nuts and bolts down, replaced the water pump tube and the bearing retaining tab and then installed the engine in the frame.

Damaged Rotary disk, and crank in

Some photos of the RG rotary disk - completely destroyed!

 

And the reconditioned crank in place. Due to the right hand side bearing having rotated, I am thinking of putting some bearing retainer (Loctite on the seat).

 

Bol d'Or Classic

Back from the weekend at Magny Cours. I completed 5 out of 6 sessions - that's the good news. Arrived at Magny Cours early morning to be confronted with the organisations bureaucracy of Lariviere organising the event.  They hadn't asked anyone to bring a medical certificate to obtain a weekend license. So they pushed us all to see the medical team from the circuit to get an OK to get a license, then followed the consequential queue's for the technical check up and having to deal with the French lunch time break finally to get on the track 5 mins after my first session started.

The bike had nothing under 8 or 9k and I nearly came in after one lap, however there was a nice blast of power from 9-11 so if I kept it up there it was nice! It was smoking quite a lot especially from nr. 3.
I jetted down for the second session as it was significantly warmer, the bike ran better, although still smoking, and I was starting to suspect something amiss with nr. 3. Anyway to cut a long story short, I wanted to try bigger pilot jets as the low rev range was awful. When I removdd the nr. 3 carb, I could see the damage to the rotary disk! There was one small part remaining partially blocking the port, and the central part of the disk was the only part left rotating! So nr. 3 has swallowed a carbon disk. I suppose I should be grateful that it was a steel disk or maybe steel wouldn't have broken! All will be revealed when I strip it down.

ALCCO (Laurent Badie ) had finished my 350 crank, and cylinders, I will be using Prox pistons on the 350! Laurent managed to leave me one more rebore on the cylinders, so I have to be careful or think of something different - one of the guys was talking about Nikasiling the bores - could be an idea.

Anyway loads of stuff to do this winter on all bikes!

Magny Cours

Prepared the RG for demonstration laps at Magny Cours next weekend. The weather forecast is cooler than Ledenon by about 5 degrees,  but I am keeping the mainjets as they finished Ledenon which hopefully should be about right.

I have reinstalled the adjustable pickup again and am using 30 degrees advance for the static timing.  I have programmed 2 different ignition curves, one standard and the other with a 4 degree advance everywhere except at low rpm, to help with starting.

I started her up and warmed her through and then fitted the fairings. With some luck we'll have a sunny weekend and the bike will work. Hope so as no backup, as the 350 is still in bits!

Stripping the 350

Engine out, and then split the crankcases.  The first time I have done this on the 350. Lots of crap in the bottom of the crankcase, but luckily no damage to the crankcase,  however the con rod has bent, so the crank will definitely have to be rebuilt.  The cylinder is also marked quite deeply,  so waiting for the advise of an expert to know if I can rebore successfully. It looks like the bearing on the Rhs has spun a little not sure if any of this would have been a cause of the trouble.

Ooops

A piston from the 350 has tried to escape! Don't know the cause yet, but these were the bits in the exhaust pipe, the head (not too damaged).It looks like the skirt of the piston has broken off and gone flying around!

Will no more later... At least I can re-use the gudgeon pin circlip..... just a joke.....

Weekend Testing at Ledenon

Took both bikes down to Ledenon this past weekend, basically to run in the RG 500 a bit (all new bearings in the crankcase, plus completely rebuilt), and to get a good setup for Magny-Cours in September.

The weather forecast was good on Saturday, with rain arriving after lunch Sunday, so after installing the tent and everything, I bought a few sessions to see what was what. The 500 started well enough, but after taking her out for a lap, I had to pull in as she just wasn't pulling any revs at all, only once going down hill did I manage to get her into the power, but couldn't maintain anything, so thought it safer to pull in. Initial thought was my ignition curve so I quickly connected up the programmer and dialed in the standard ignition curve and went out again - different but not better, I even got black flagged for going so slow!

The next session was only 20 mins away so just fueled up the 350 and took her out for a spin - she ran well, although changing the front fork (gold valve) settings did not seem to have cured the chattering from the front around the triple left bend - most disconcerting as it is one of the quickest bends on the track. Anyway had a good laugh with the 350, although there were some quick boys out there on big bikes, but I still managed to overtake some on the bends!

Still thinking ignition, (RG500) I pulled the adjustable pickup and replaced it with the original Suzuki one, this time, a quick test in the car park still had issues, not pulling at all.

Started thinking it was jetting, and as the temperature was significantly hotter than Croix-en-Ternois last year, I down jetted to 250's all around (from 260's), this made a significant difference in the car park, so decided to use my last run of the day to go out with the 500, this time pulling significantly better, but still not brilliant! This time I got a lap in, but couldn't change down gears! At least I could but with ever increasing difficulty, decided to pull in again! Jumped on the 350 and completed the session on the 350, right until the last lap, where on the deceleration lap, a gravely noise came from the engine, literally like there was a handful of gravel bouncing around in the engine! The engine seized just as I pulled the clutch and pulled off the track.

OK so the test bike has gearbox problems and the spare bike has blown up, I didn't fancy draining oil and looking at the gearbox at the circuit, so we packed up and made our way home.

Well Sunday was used to good effect, and I found and fixed the issue with the RG. The gear lever return spring was not seated correctly and was not effective (my fault), When installing the lever you need to ensure the return spring is located either side of a locating tab on the gear change mechanism, not crossed but so that the 2 spring ends are roughly parallel either side of the tab. I had installed it crossed so that it wasn't working. In order to change that I had to remove the clutch etc.. to get access.

I was also not happy with the fairing support at the front which was obviously still bent, so that came off as well to try and get a roughly symmetrical shape out of it. It really looks like it was designed at 5:00pm on a Friday evening, nothing is symmetrical, crappy welds, and bits of bent metal, will have to try and find a good picture to know what to bend where.

I haven't touched the 350 yet, but the kickstart is still solid, and I think a piston has broken up and embedded itself somewhere, anyway my bet is the left hand side - but we will see next weekend.

Just for the record, I rejuvenated the front brake master cylinder on my Daytona, as the rubber seal had worn through and it was getting a bit notchy, it now works perfectly, plus changed the gear lever rubber which also had worn through!

RG Update

Well, most of the paint is done (not very well I may add) rattle cans are OK, but nothing beats a professional job, plus I always seem to get masking tape that leaks! Anyway, I'll probably fall off again soon, so no point worrying too much!

Entered the ignition curve in the Zeeltronic, to be ready for seat of the pants dyno testing at Ledenon in a couple of weeks. I am initially going to try the "optimized" curve  on the attached file, although I should look at Try1 and Try2 during the day to get a feel. The advanced static ignition is now at ~30.5 degrees BTDC, so this gives me the possibility to program any angle less than 30.5 degrees.
While I was messing with the handheld programmer I noticed what looked like cracks in my swinging arm, however after further investigation they appear to be just the surface coating, there is no damage to the inside nor when I tried to open the cracks with a wedge I couldn't get anything to move. You may need to load the full size pictures to see them.

The 500 may not be ready for Ledenon, so I took a look at the 350 to ensure it was working OK, there is a bit of engine noise so I checked out the power valves, and took off the exhaust to take a look at the pistons and barrels which looked OK, I hope that means that everything is alright, and not that I have a crank problem, must check the rotor is still tight!