Checking rotary disk timing

So, Sunday afternoon, wanted to take some time to ensure the timing of my rotary disks compared to the piston position. First thing I noticed was that no pistons are in TDC when the line on the rotor lines up with the crankcases, not sure if this is normal or not. Then you can see in the video, that as the pistons on the opposing cylinders come to TDC then rotary valves are just at the cusp of starting to shut.

So as the piston rises it is leaving low pressure in the crankcase which is drawing in fuel from the carbs through the rotary disk, as the piston reaches TDC the disk port can then start to shut as the piston starts downwards, as the disk closes the inlet  port the piston compresses the mixture in the crankcase, finally releasing it through the transfer ports into the top of the cylinder, then the piston continues upwards closing the transfer port and then the exhaust port (quite a lot higher) until finally compressing the fuel/air mixture in the top of the cylinder until the spark plug fires (before TDC) to push the piston around again. in the video I am mixing up cylinder 2 and 3 - obviously the diagonally opposite cylinders are pairs i.e. 1 & 4 and 2 & 3.

Pistons and barrels back on

As the title.

RG 500

Head races in, and forks on, plus rear wheel and chain are back on to allow to use the rear brake to undo the gearbox sprocket, I need to change the very thin o-ring under the gearbox sprocket.

RG 500 Update

So I bought a cheap RG500 frame, and have been busy building it back up. I checked out the swinging arm bearings and they look pretty good, so they got a clean and new grease and on it went, along with the torque arm and rear brake and suspension.

I also got the engine in.

Ledenon Saturday

We were at Ledenon for probably the last outing, with the 350 and the FZR 600. As Sunday the weather was not good we decided to just do the Saturday. 3 sessions in the morning and 4 sessions in the afternoon, with Pierre-Luc on the 600 and me on the 350. It was a little bit cold for the first run, (7 degrees), but the 350 was fine, a little light colour on the plugs after the first run, but all good after.

We did have a bit of a panic getting the 350 started as one of the plug caps had come lose on the HT lead, but once that was plugged back properly, it ran fine all day.

I was pretty knackered after 7 runs out, and I must find a different riding position as my legs are really aching today. I think I am a little cramped on the bike, which leads to my toes pushing on the front of my boots and cramped legs.

Pierre-Luc, had a great day, and started to get his lap times down, so he was happy with that, and he is starting to abandon his road style and get his bum and knee out so all's good.

Sunday I spent some time in the garage, got the crankcase top back on the engine and cleaned up the swinging arm, and superglued the front mudguard which had quite a clean split in it. I sanded down the "cracks" on the swinging arm, but they are just on the surface, so nothing to worry about (!).

Top crankcase on

Installation at ledenon - very busy (not)

New Gearbox shaft O ring

Cheap bits

Output shaft o ring behind the gearbox sprocket. One of the cheaper parts for rhe RG. Oh and my fairings are ready at Poly26 (not so cheap). What colour should I do?

Thruxton R

Tried one of these at lunch time today. Here are my first impressions.
Didn't pick up from idle at first (maybe cold...)
Also had a fluff I thought I had run out of petrol, at one point, but it must have got itself in a twist.
The front end (showa) wasn't as planted as I would have liked. It didn't like going over bid bumps - I am sure the front wheel left the ground (maybe over damped).
The overall position was (for me) much the same as Libby's street triple, they do an option with the fairing with lower clipons - which I think would suit me better.
Very comfortable (I only had it for about 40 mins though).
Once the engine is up to about 3K rpm, there is a real PUNCH all the way to the red line ~7K rpm,
I miss the 12.5K on the Daytona, it almost reminded me of a 2 stroke power band - 3k - 7k.
The rear was lovely end (Ohlins) was lovely, the bike feels quite small as the tank is slim although in order to get your knees in the cut outs you have to sit back a bit, which is no bad thing.

It doesn't feel at all the heavy thing I was expecting.
Overall riding was quite pleasant, I am sure the fan came on, but I could find the temperature gauge so I am not sure if it was running hot! The instruments seemed at the wrong angle and picked up the reflection of the sky quite easily, which made them difficult to read. And at idle the needle is not steady (same on the Daytona).

Do I want one? No not really, I might like to try the version with the lower clipons to see if that makes the front feel any nicer, the biggest thing I would miss though is my lovely 3 cylinder engine with bags of power all the way through a large range of revs... Just suppose I'll keep on looking!

Thanks to cylceworld for the photo.

Ready for repair

Well the RG is now down to the bare frame. The cranks have washed up well and no bearing damage. The big end bearings and small ends feel OK. The piston on nr. 3 had some impacts and the top ring slot was slightly squashed and after some advice from the gamma listers I opened it back up with a file. Next step is to get the frame straightened and rebuild the engine.

Engine stripped

I am stripping the RG engine because it has swallowed some gravel and also coz it's lighter to lift out when dismantled!

Cylinders 1 & 3 are the worrying ones, loads of shit everywhere, some impacts in the cylinder heads and loads of dust in the transfer ports.

Surprisingly the cylinders are undamaged, the pustons are showing some impacts but after a session with the emery cloth they are not too bad. The worst is that one of the ring grooves has slightly squashed gripping the ring.

The general consensus on the RG list is that I can file some metal off to release the high pounts in the groove - so I am going to try it.

Nearly stripped

Just the engine and swinging arm to go.

Just tested this...

KTM 1290 GT

What an engine, loads of gadgets to play with, traction control, anti-wheelie, shifter, ABS, dynamic suspension... but all that pales into insignificance when you open the throttle.... Brrrrmmmmph....

GREAT... now where did I put that 18,000 Euros.....

New Rev counter

So, fed up with the Ducati rev. counter bouncing between 0-10K rpm, I though I would add a cheap alternative, just so I know roughly where I am. I purchased this off ebay, honestly the Chinese will rule the world - 5 quid and free postage for a rev. counter. Anyway, the first thing you notice when you get it out of the package is that there doesn't appear to be a way to switch it off, so it's built as a disposable rev. counter lasting as long as the lithium battery lasts! Setting it up was easy, although there are different modes for 1 spark, 2 sparks per revolution etc... honestly didn't seem to make much difference. The other thing you notice is that it has quite a big latency, so it won't do to look at fast changes, but will still be useful when cruising at a fixed engine speed. Anyway, for a fiver what did you expect!

Here is what the Chinese manufacturer said to do :

If you want to turm off it.
You need press the S2 ,when LED show '05'.Press the 02 together untill the LED show '00'.After few seconds.The item will turn off.

Just a simple process then! haha...

Repairing the ALFANO

I am just starting to do little bits and pieces of the RG. This weekend I was trying to repair the lap time/logging device (ALFANO). This device has a magnetic sensor which recognises magnetic strips at various places on various circuits, so you can do lap times and segment times and see how you are doing. It also measures coolant temperature and RPM.

The magnetic sensor was ripped off in the accident. Basically the wire connecting the sensor to the display unit is a small size coax cable. Looking on the web to replace it I was shocked at the price they were asking for a new one, so I was looking at ways to fix it. I thought I would be able to just join the ends together, and solder, but this was difficult as the earth (shield) connection had been ripped off within the rubber connector.

Instead of giving up, I got the dremel to work and cut back the rubber and got down to the simple 2 pins that were the connector. I cleaned up the tips of the 2 pins and soldered on the remaining wire, and bingo it worked - saved myself over 100 Euros!

The bit at the top is what was left of the connector plug, the bit at the bottom is the 2 pin connector

Sorry about the focus, but a bit of  shrink wrap after having soldered the wires on and good to go

Waving a magnet next to the sensor proved that the repair was working!

RG Stripping

Does it look bent to you? |Good news is that the fork legs are straight, but taking the exhausts off revealed plenty of dust and gravel in the left side - means the engine was still sucking and blowing in the gravel trap - oh dear.....

Yamaha FZR600

Hardly touched the RG in the garage since the smash. It looks like there is a guy in Lyon (A2M) that will be able to straighten the frame for ~500 Euros, whilst the other alternative is to use the engine in a more modern frame (RGV250 is popular), totting up the various costs of that are much more expensive so I will probably go with straightening, need to start stripping everything off it.

The FZR 600 was treated to new linear fork springs from RACETECH (0.95Kgs/m). The springs are a fair bit shorter than standard, so they give you some plumbers tube to make up new spacers, to adjust the pre-load correctly, I have had then out a couple of times to shorten the spacers as it seems really stiff. At the same time I have been updating the carbs, adding ones from the 4JH model, they are Keihin carbs versus the old Mikuni ones, they are 1 mm bigger diameter (33mm) but more importantly they do not wear the needle valves as much as they have a slightly different design, so I am hoping for better fueling coming off idle. I thought it would be a quick swap, but the following had to be done to get them to fit :-

New admission rubbers (ebay for 80 Euros), fitting these was a game as they have spigots for fixing vacuum gauges too, which very nearly touch the water hoses running behind the engine. in the end I fitted some rubber hoses sealed off with screws and clips to the spigots, which should make balancing the carbs relatively easy. Also the new rubbers have a "double O" kind off cross section, so ideally material should be removed from the cylinder head to make full use of the extra diameter - maybe a winter project.

Next the standard hose clips wouldn't fit the new admission rubbers, so I just used standard jubilee clips (40mm-60mm), which I think are OK, however getting more difficult to access them to remove the carbs.

The choke cable had to be lengthened by about 2.5cms as the mechanism is slightly different, but it works the same.

Also the push pull accelerator cable needed a mod which involved me removing the soldered nipple from the push end and adding a cable adjuster, and then re-soldering on a new nipple.

Remove the plastic fixing spigot from the air box as it is more centered on the new airbox, compared to the offset one on the old box.

Finally although the second hand airbox came with a K&N filter I dumped it coz it looked like it had melted at some stage, so a normal filter was sourced (Best4Bikes).

Luckily the carbs were pretty well balanced, a couple of tweaks and it was good to go, and the air mixture screws have now been set to 1.75 turns out.

In the meantime went out for 250Kms with the Ducati through the Vercors and down to Die with PL and Fred - nice with Fred's Le Mans, the 900ss and PL's Triumph! here is a photo!

The Ducati is going really well at the moment, IT TICKS OVER! although the clutch still slips it you give WOT, and the bouncing rev. counter drives me mad! I will have to get a modern one! Oh and the riding position is enough to give you cramp after 15 mins.

Gave it a really good clean on Sunday with loads of Gunk and then cleaned the stainless down pipes with loo cleaner which really does bring the shine back!

Magny-Cours track day with Up Racing

I was trying to get to Ales on the 14/15th with Pierre-Luc, however we ended up too late to get places, so I was on the search for another circuit. Magny-Cours still had places for the 14/15th August with Up-racing so I booked with them, Libby didn't want to go for both days, so I just took the Sunday (at 200 Euros!).

I packed the van and we left by about 13:00 on Saturday, and arrived at the circuit at about 18:00. The Up-racing organization was pretty good, they had tyre changing facilities, testing of helmets, and transponders to get lap times. Very hot day and difficult to get to sleep in the van, however up nice and early for the briefing. I was in the intermediate group, which they change throughout the day depending on your times.

First session at 9:20, and although the RG was still popping & farting between 6-8K it was pulling off idle well (thanks to the air screws being only a half turn open), but still difficult to ride. Was going well enough, and I decided to keep going on the 500 for the second session. They kept us waiting as a guy had blown an engine, and we also were warned of liquid coolant on the track, at various places.

Started off well, but on the second lap I pealed into the left hander at the end of the start finish straight, and lost the front going pretty fast (~130-140 kmph). I slid towards the gravel trap following the bike, which I saw flip over as it hit the gravel, and I followed doing a few rollie pollie's before coming to a stop in the gravel. I watched the whole thing happen at normal speed (for me), and I knew as soon as I stopped that I was OK, nothing damaged.

The bike however was a different matter, I knew that it had flipped so damage to basically all fairings. At some point it had landed on the top, so top fairing and rear fairing destroyed, plus the rear sub-frame looks bent, although this will need a closer look. Petrol was pissing from the tank as both left hand carbs were ripped off, and had pulled the petrol pipe off the tank, and  the petrol tap was broken so no way to close the petrol. I stood with the bike as it emptied itself and the marshal looked on mencingly wielding his extinguisher - fortunately he didn't need it.

The bike was also stuck in gear, the gear change rod had snapped, but although I could move the gear change mechanism, it didn't want to change gear, so we had to manhandle it into the van to get back to the pits.

After cooling off back at the van, we reviewed the situation and decided retreat was the best measure for the day (despite having a second bike). My helmet was scratched badly by the gravel, my leathers were holed in 3 different places, so it wasn't wise to risk continuing. Besides that the pit team (Libby) was concerned about my state of health!

We packed up the van, I had to remove the chain from the bike to push it into the van, and then 5 hours to home! I really don't know what caused the accident, was it my tyre, or was it the track conditions, I am pretty sure I didn't do anything wrong, anyway we'll never know!

My only damage is some light bruising on my arm where it looks like the gravel hit. The bike is pretty much a right off, but we'll see......

Photos from the Weekend in the Mercantour

Col d'Allos

Col d'Allos

Col d'Allos

Col d'Allos

Col des Champs

At the Auberge du Riou (Austrian Triumph) and not any oil leaks!

Walking to the Col Mairola

In Gilette

Top of the Col de Turini for lunch

Just going into the Gorges de Cian