Pics taken during Snow's Engine rebuild

[Snow]

In case anyone wants to see the silliness known as "Snow's engine rebuild", here ya go. Feel free to copy the images except the one with my brother in it if you do not alter them, aside from arrows, descriptions of the parts, resizing, and give me credit

A clean and organzied area is absolutely critical for working on carbs:


There are a few basic things needed to work on any major project, and here they are:


You will also need the proper equipment, such as a good motor mounting device:


The only problem I ran into with this setup, was that I later realized all of my tools were in that tool box support the motor...Also, I suggest draining the oil BEFORE removing the motor from the bike...

But of course, for our project, we needed a bore kit, I selected the Wiseco K-1196 kit and purchased it through Pro-Flo of Pensacola, Florida for under $400 including shipping:

And no, the Triumph speed triple does NOT come with the kit, that was a belated Christmas gift from my brother to me.


You will also need to get your cylinders bored by a good machine shop that can handle aluminum motorcycle cylinders - this cost me $125 (go go gadget visa!):



Now you are ready for the FUN! You need to put the rings on the pistons
(I am told this is a oil expander ring, I called it "That silly thing that stretches"


and get those bad boys into the cylinders...of course, we decided to do it the hard way and connect the pistons to the rods and then slide the cylinders down onto them...please, for the love of all things holy, do NOT do it that way - instead, install the pistons into the cylinders first...you will save *much* grief...



After a few more hours, a couple house clamps (for getting the pistons with rings into the cylinders), a 12 pack of coke, and many swear words, we had this:


And now we have the end result: a 1196cc machine that likes to jump to 4-6k rpm's because the carbs still are awaiting the arrival of my new colortune for 14mm motorcycles.



Next pictoral adventure from Snow:

Snow and the mystery wonderland of Mercury (No, not from fish in Lake Michigan) and the technicolor colortune...


I hope you enjoyed this adventure more than we had going through it

[sixtysix]

I still need to do mine

[TopCatGr58]

Been there, done that!!

Hey there Snow,
Congrats on getting it done. I did the same thing with mine 2 years ago with the 1179 kit, but, I, too, put the pistons on the connecting rods first, then put/slid the jugs down onto the pistons. That's the only way I can see that you could do it!?!?

If you put the pistons in the cylinders/jugs first, then try to put/attach them to the connecting rods, you won't have enough room to put the "C" ring keepers on and such, IMHO!!!

The trick I found was to oil up the cylinders well first, then fit the inner pistons (2-3) first, slightly tilt the jugs so that you could then work with the ouboard pistons one at a time. I was able to compress the rings relatively easily enough with just my fingers, and slid them into the jugs, they should have been tapered on the bottom to allow for this process!! Rotating the crank a bit is no problem since the head and cam/chain isn't installed yet.

I hate to ask now that you've got it together, but you didn't mention doing and end gap for the rings before you did the final assembly?? I hope you checked them and adjusted them to spec!

Sorry you found it so difficult. I'm no super wrencher either, nor very strong, but didn't have that much trouble with it!! Just glad you succeeded, except for your carb tune of course!!

[Snow]

Yeah, there were quite a few details I left out, but we did make a nice "Y" with the ring gaps You had me scared for a minute, thought you were talking about something I hadn't heard about!

We did oil the cylinders *very* liberally, but still found it difficult to get the pistons with rings in without the hose clamps. In all honesty, it took about 20-30 minutes total (including short rides) for the bike to stop smoking.

We inserted the middle two cylinders first and then did the outer two - getting the outter two was actually more difficult because everytime we started to press the cylinders, the crank would turn on us :/
The piston/ring installer that I got will only be useful if dropping the pistons in before connecting them to the rods, I still have the package unopen and ready to go back to Discount Service Advance Auto.

Right night the carbs are killing me, I have a total of 33 miles on this motor now and have decided to wait until I have the carbs right before riding any more....hopefully my colortune will be in today or tommorow (USPS from Boca Raton to Tallahassee, FL)