What did you do to your bike today?

[motoman]

lol......+1 Nate.........

[cywelchjr]

Another late one. This weekend I finally found my cotter pins and put a pin in the castle nut on the rear axle. Checked it first, it hadn't moved but feel better with it there anyways.

Then I checked the manual and realized that I'm about 20 lbs low on the torque on that nut, only put a little over 80, and it's supposed to be 108. Of course I did have to crank on it just a bit more to get the pin in, so it might be ok, but I'm gonna have to check it this weekend (it's close, I don't think it's gonna be a problem until then anyways).

Oh, then I took it out for a 60 mile ride (in my summer gear) on some nice twisties.

[3Phase]

After the ride how're you liking the 750FD, Cy?

[cywelchjr]

After the ride how're you liking the 750FD, Cy?

Liking it pretty well actually. I find I already hardly notice it on takeoff anymore, and it's sure nice on the straight stretches to have the RPM down. I'll find out about the really tough stuff this summer when the snow has melted in the Sierras, since that's where the really tough switchbacks are.

[petejw]

finished off the spare head today,

cleaned the exhaust ports with the soda blaster,
relapped the valves,
replaced the valve guide seals,
reshimed the valves so all the exhaust are exactly 8 thou
and intakes 4 thou which meant grinding a few shims to suit.

started on the spare pistons,
cleaned all the carbon off, cleaned the piston grooves
and polished, waiting on the rings to arrive.

then all that is left to do is hone the cylinders.

[natemoen]

Wana fly over here Pete and do all that on mine?

[petejw]

lol

nate,
what a bugger of a job shimming those valves were,
even with the head off the bike.
something i learnt
the hard way, always torque the cam caps every time
u put them back on, just a quarter of a turn to tight makes the valves
close up, and when ur grinding the shims to suit, it makes it that little bit harder, i had them on and off
so many times i lost count. lol

im lucky in that ive got a spare head, pistons and barrels
so i can do all the work and still ride the bike. :-)

[petejw]

cleaned up the pistons today,
got rid of all the carbon,
used an old ring to clean the carbon from the ring grooves,
used a guitar wire to clean the oil holes out, a few of them were blocked
with carbon.
used oven cleaner for the inside of the pistons, that worked quite well,
left it on for around 10 minutes and did it twice, that stuff is pretty toxic
so didnt want to leave it on to long.
also polished and buffed them up,
these pistons and the jugs are off my original engine which had over 150,000 k's
on it and cleaned up really well,
the only problem i came across was the gudgion pin was a bit to loose in 1 of the pistons for my liking, this piston was attached to the con rod that seized on the original engine.
so ill be using a piston and pin from the engine i have mounted in the bike atm.

[3Phase]

Pete, how tight did you go on the cam cap bolts?

If you have any Plastigauge (or a bore/dial gauge), check the cam journals fore and aft next to the bolts while you have the head off the bike and see if any of the journals or caps are distorted. If they got squished they'll measure more like an hourglass instead of a circle and the oil film might not hold while the camshaft tries to rub the new high spots off of journals.

[petejw]

hi scott,

i wasnt game enuff to do the plasti-guage on the cam
journals in case they are out
im trying to do this one on the cheap ($40 rings, $50 cam chain)
so if it is out i dont really want to know,
they were torqued up to 8 foot lbs close enuff
to the 7.5 thats stock in the book,
but yeah ur probably right they could be a little distorted.
ill just have to wait and see how it goes, the head was fitted
prior and didnt seem to have any problems with it,
thanx for the suggestion tho.

[3Phase]

Meh, at only 8 lbs you should be fine, Pete.

Where'd you find rings for $40? Mine cost more like $50 a hole for STD rings so I really hope I won't be doing that again anytime soon.

[petejw]

these are the .25 oversize rings a few
have bought already on ebay scott,
heres a link

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eB...=STRK:MEWNX:IT


what u did do tho is make me think of the caps i had on there,
i had another damaged head with caps laying about nearby,
i must of got the caps mixed up, so i put the other caps back on
and turned the cams a few times, feels and sits much better.

[3Phase]

Well, yeah, that'd do it! Good find; nice save! <laughing>

[CatatonicBug]

This last week, I replaced the crank oil seal under the alternator, and decided against threading the oil galley plug, since that wasn't actually where the oil was coming from. This weekend, I replaced my coils with a slightly used set of Accels and replaced my plugs with iridiums. The plug caps that came with the Accels are the tall, straight ones, and the wires are way too long, so I'll be getting some 90º caps soon to replace them. It does seem to start a bit stronger now though.

Gave the bike a bath, to wash the salt off, then it decided to rain today. Oh well.. At least I know the Respro Foggy Mask in my helmet even works in the rain!

[tcoop]

Half way throgh a valve adjustment. Found that the exhaust valves needed larger shims (Loud tapping noise one gapp was over 0.75 mm) and the intake needed smaller shims (3 of the 4 were 0.005 mm). Hopefully I will finnish the Intake valves tonight.