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!