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Battery tray & horn installed before the rear fender goes on, and before engine goes in. So much easier.
Most of the electrical gizmos in place
Coil brackets loosely in place, still need to install the ballast resistor & capacitors first, then install the coils later (to keep them out of the way of installing the head).
Turns out the rims WERE the correct ones, Buchanan is at work on them and I should have them by next week.
This was the offending intake valve; a bit scruffy. Valve replaced, guides will all be replaced. I'll lap them in later today. Just picked up the cylinders, I need to wash them thoroughly then mask & paint them.
Beautiful freshly Blanchard ground brake discs. Just waiting on one more Dunlop K81 to arrive today and the tires & discs will get mounted to the new rims, then it will be a roller again!
Oil tank came out quite nicely stripped after 72 hours in Simple Green 50/50 (and it was already grungy stuff I'd used to clean a bunch of filthy parts). So, if you have time on your hands...
Nicely bored and finish honed cylinders set to low end of tolerance spec to JCC pistons and Hastings rings
Handy trick for tightening & loosening sprocket nuts, just wrap a section of chain around your sprocket and clamp it in a vise. If unit construction engine, such as Triumph, or on the bike, either leave chain on, or wrap a section of chain on the sprocket and clamp it with vice grip pliers.
Correct F.A.G. transmission layshaft superblend bearing in place FINALLY.
2 little chunks of light guage aluminum angle to hold the pistons steady, a good set of ring compressors, and the hardest task left is to remove the compressor bands once the cylinders are past all the rings. It's tight in there.
Head installed. Very easy when there are no coils in the way, no tricks needed, just tip it like it shows in the manual. Only one pushrod didn't have a rocker in it's cup, took 10 seconds with a flashlight and I was done. Assembly and install in 1-1/2 hours from a bare head.
Installed and adjusted the head steady spring to 1.5" extended length. What this does is counter the bulk of the weight of the engine, so that the rubber buffers in the front and rear isolastics don't sag, and the top buffers don't split and fail so easily.
Looking like a bike now.
I started to install the primary system and can't find the original clutch location circlip anywhere; also can't find a bloody spare, although I KNOW it will turn up the day after the new replacement arrives... Went ahead and installed the wiring harness; I've got some refurb work to do on the left side switch cluster to recover the male pins that had wires soldered to them.
Test-fitting my set of flat slike Kehin CVs, and what do you know? THEY FIT! I though the rear frame web was going to need to be modified, or the velocity stacks shortened, to work with a Commando. Easier than I thought, and now I'll maybe try them on my Interstate.
Circlip arrived, so I set the primary drive in place and gently snugged in the clutch basket.
Checking primary chain alignment - I used vice grips to gently clamp a section of alloy angle to one of the alternator housing studs with one face flat against top and bottom edges of the primary case near the drive sprocket, then measured the gap to the face of a primary chain plate.
Next, I relocated the angle back to one of the chain adjuster studs and measured the same gap near the clutch basket. They were the same, using the shims that were previously installed. So, no worries.
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