I worked on a few things this weekend. The first thing was to rebuild the engine. My engine will for now be a very mild upgrade. So for now it has the stock cam and carb. But I did buy a used billet aluminum flywheel and a billet syncho balance link. Both of these are primarily for safety reasons- the flywheel to avoid the possibility of have a 2o pound cast iron flywheel exploding 1 foot from where I sit. The synchro link to keep the heavy counterbalance mechanism from flying out the rear of the engine. I bought that off of Squidd.
I ordered a new set of rings and a head gasket along with a rebuild kit for the carb. The engine had come to me with an enormous amount of oil sludge in the head and exhaust port. The reason for this as I found out was that the engine must have been rebuilt before and vital piston ring components were missing- particularly the spring ring that goes underneath the oil ring. This mean there was a lot of slop in the piston. Somehow, this didn't damage the cylinder or piston. With the correct installation of the ring set, it had much better compression. The cylinder was honed as well.
A little trick I did on my last engine was to drill out the brass sleeve for the governor. usually it'll just slide out with a bit of drilling. Next I grind down the little ridge on the outside. Lastly, I get a bolt, two rubber O-rings, and a nylock nut and use this to seal the hole. With the new billet flywheel, the coil was running into the magnets. So a small amount had to be shaved from the edge to accomodate.
Next was to address a problem I had last week, which was that the chain going from the clutch to the RAGB was slightly... too long. Sort of inbetween. I figured I could order a slightly bigger sprocket and that would solve the problem. But the same problem remained. This was obviously not the right solution. So I instead machined the holes for the engine to be slots that enable the engine to be moved forward and back so that the chain can be tightened or loosened for the optimum tension along with the tensioner itself.
After that, installed the battery hold down. This was made of two 7.5" bolts pushed through the bottom through drilled holes and then welded into place. A shelf bracket served to go across the top. With the lower brackets and now the top hold down, the battery doesn't budge at all.
Last was to install more diamond plate. I wanted to be able to easily remove the floor piece to get to the components below if need be. I welded in angle brackets to the seat mount which allowed me to screw the plate under to the front of the seat and recess it back to allow removal of the floor. I also screwed a piece to the dash which shields me from the battery, but allows me to remove and access the battery. I'm starting to see an end to the build. It was sort of tough going because my old drill died and the crappy replacement literally fried itself in 5 minutes... which meant purchasing a third... which so far still works. Anyhow, I fgure another month or so and she might be done.
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