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The rest of the materials for fabricating the "big bearing" tranny cradle, swingarm & spindle arrived. Box section tubing for the swingarm, round aluminum bar to cut the spindle hubs from, and rectangular steel bar to cut the chain adjusters from. Can you say "trick bits"?
I cut down the I.D. on two sections of heavy wall pipe to a snug push fit for the previously mentioned sealed bearings; these will serve as the bearing retainers
Thanx again to my custom knifemaker friend Enrique Pena for the use of his lathe, mill, drill press, MIG welder, and belt grinders
Before these tack welds, I set the bearings, spacers, outer tube and spindle in place to keep them aligned during welding
Since Enrique had another welding project going, I just set my stuff up and let him lay down those beautiful MIG beads. His custom knifemaking shop has really been spiffed up with a new mill, beadblast with extractor fan, and a few other nice pieces of equipment. His traditional & tactical knives are world-class builds.
Like I said... they look almost like machine-laid weld beads. I can get close to this neat, but it's been a while; I'll do a little more practice before I get into the swingarm.
By the way, those are a set of old bearings just doing alignment duty, they won't be re-used except for future mockup duty.
Before anyone jumps in with negative criticism, I assure you there is FAR more than adequate penetration to both the base metal of the cradle frame and the bearing sleeves. It's a 230V welder set near the high end of it's range. Believe me, these welds are twice as strong as the factory welds on the isolastic tubes 3" away.
Then tapped for the grub screw. Off to the powdercoater first thing in the morning, along with masking instructions per Old Britt's page. I lost my old powdercoater, so I've got to get the new guys up to speed.
Great condition original oil tank arrived today; I'll get it thoroughly clean and paint it in-house with Rust-O-Leum gloss black which does a great job.
The crankshaft came out nice and clean ("before, above, "after" below). I really love "Simple Green" parts wash/degreaser. Journals are in excellent shape, I need to check them with a micrometer, but there is no indication whatsoever that I'll need a re-grind.
Sorry I forgot to take "before" photos of the head, it was pretty scruffy. Looks excellent now. I need to measure the guides; it's likely they'll be replaced.
8-24-15 Official beginning of assembly phase. I drove 340 miles (round trip) to collect the powdercoated parts. Kinda like Christmas in August...
Repaired oil fling guard on backside of primary cover (it was badly mangled by a blown drive chain), very cleanly done. I still need to thoroughly clean the entire case half, scrape the old gasket off, and replace the wicking o-ring for the tranny mainshaft.
Oil tank has a decent re-weld of the typical mounting bracket vibration-induced fracture
Valve stems are all less than .001" wear according to specs, as were the guides
Not going to use the overlength set of valve springs after all, I was concerned about the longer inner springs. Sorted through 4 sets of springs and found four sets less than .002 under standard length. That's within limits.
Carefully installed all the exhaust rockers, shims, thackaray washers and shafts in order, taking care to face the flats on the shafts away from the intake shaft flats, according to the book. Note the RH4 stamp above the rocker window in the left of the photo-
Intakes all done as well. Head is complete and ready for installation
Don't forget the case alignment dowels (and the cam thrust washer, and the intermediate pinion circlip), install before closing up the cases
Bottom end nipped up, ready to install the cam drivetrain & oil pump
I colored the timing marks so you can see better. 10 chain rollers between marks on the intermediate & cam wheels, and the marked crank tooth slots in between the colored intermediate teeth
Don't put the oil pump gasket in wrong, or you'll blow your engine. Thankfully, I'm batting a thousand on that chore
Cam drivetrain & oil pump done, that's it for this section (according to the book)
Look real close and you can see my crankcase vent modification. One little threaded hole just above the factory case vent big threaded hole, and another little threaded hole to the right of the cover alignment dowel.
Reed valve installed nice and neat. Bottom end is DONE.
Box-section swingarm installed, with big bearing conversion to the transmission cradle, and vernier adjustable isolastic unit. The iso is held in place temporarily with an allthread rod, new (long) stud is on the way. DOT shocks, slightly used but in great shape.
So, the crankcase is ready to be married to the chassis. This will be a milestone.
Scrounged around for about an hour yesterday and came up with several goodies including a complete new Barnett throttle cable assembly, Ducati Monster throttle and kill button left over from my son's "street fighter" project, and a new drive chain...
Also found an almost new Sparx electronic ignition and new-in-the-box Emgo dual lead coil. It was a good day to scrounge!
That's a good $300 scrounge. I must have a million dollars on those shelves if I start adding it all up. hee hee
For those of you who have any interest in this thread, it will be non-stop till it's done, then sold. There is enough working capital to get it done, according to my calculations; only a double-handful of small parts remain to finish, so there shouldn't be any waiting on parts with other subsystems and components I can change focus to.
I'm figuring a max of two more months, but hoping for just one month...
Today is forks day. Start with cleaned and polished parts, plus a set of new seals.
Took a look at the partsfish layout and realized I didn't have any bottom "gaskets" (copper or fiber washers) for the damper bolts in the fork bottoms, so I spent a half hour scrounging up a nearly correct pair, then had to manually downsize the outer diameter with my bench grinder. Ever since I sliced a 1/2" chunk off my right index finger a couple of years ago, I do jobs like that VERY carefully. They dropped right into place. (the fingertip grew back, but feels strange)
I used a set of old seals, inverted, then a length of 2" PVC pipe, to tap the new seals into place, then popped in the circlips. Done.
Next, I installed the neck bearings using a large bolt to draw them into the neck (yes, I placed the bearing spacer in between them first!). I crank down a bit, then check for any misalignment and tap with a block of soft wood on the high side of the bearing that is askew, then crank down some more.
Fitted up the yokes and figured out the best steering stop was to simply chop off about 1/2" each side of the upper neck tab; that way, the old Yamaha handlebar mount abutments stop up against the remaining tab. Piece of cake. I had already turned down the yoke stem to fit the Norton sealed steering bearings, so that was that.
Suspension semi-complete. Just need to insert all the hardware and nip it up (not tight until after the wheels are in place and aligned).
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