Winter Tear down

I don’t have time to read all this shit, just show me the pics...

During my trip to Vermont for Vermort 9, the bike died while out on a ride, just before it died the engine started knocking really loud. Since the bike was unridable I decided to start the winter tear down a little early and see what was going on inside the engine.

I pulled the oil bag and gas tank off the bike and brought it into the house to begin pulling it apart.  I’ve never taken an engine completely apart so I figure I’ll be buying a few new tools during this procedure.

These are a couple shots of my work space. The room is crammed with other stuff which I was hoping to have cleaned out by the time I started, but shit happens. At least I got the stereo in this room. Cash and a short time frame didn’t allow me to coat the new floor, so I’m trying to keep it as clean as possible.

With the engine still in the frame, I pulled the rocker boxes, head and cylinder barrel.  In the picture to the right you can see that the connecting rod on the left is damaged, it had apparently been slammed into the cylinder block. At this point I pulled out a chunk of the cylinder block from the case, you can see this in the previous picture laying on the blue rag.

I didn’t even look at the cylinder block until the next day.  The damage was worse that I though it would be.  The right hand cylinder was missing a huge chunk out of it.  I was hoping to just replace the connecting rods, but at this point it looked like I was going to be replacing the rods, pistons, cylinder blocks and all necessary bearings/bushings, which isn’t a bad idea since I don’t know what this engine went through before I got it.

The next step was to pull the engine from the frame and finish taking it apart. I hit a couple snags during this process, the first was when trying to remove the clutch hub.  This required a trip to British Cycle Supply for a clutch hub puller, since I figure this won’t be my last trip into a British engine, I decided to get the right tool for the job.

Once the clutch hub was pulled the gears pulled out easily.  In this shot you can see inside the gearbox as well as a shot of the timing gears and oil pump.  Below is a shot of the other side, the primary has been removed, a necessary step to get to the clutch hub, and the cases are ready to be split.

With all the proper bolts removed the cases came apart fairly easy.  Inside the left hand case you can see chunks of the cylinder block.

I hit a road block at this point, in order to pull the crank out to get the damaged connecting rod, I needed to remove the crank gear. I also decided to pull the cam gears and cams in order to strip the engine down completely in order to replace all the bushings.  Again, this required a couple specialty tools, a crank gear puller and a cam puller, this required another trip to British Cycle Supply.

The trip to BCS takes about 45 minutes from work to drive to, it was a great day for the trip as well, even though it had to be done in the car. BCS is out in the middle of nowhere, to the right are a couple pictures of their entrance. It’s at the top of a twisty secluded road on a “mountain” side in Nova Scotia.  The picture below was taken while driving back down that road.

There’s a lot of nice roads like this in Nova Scotia, I’m looking forward to next summer now that I have all winter to get the bike up and running. I didn’t notice until after downloading the picture that I was a little bit in the wrong lane, fortunately there is next to no traffic.

Now that I had the crank gear puller I had no problem getting the gear off.  It’s not all the way on in the picture, the gripper actually gets under the gear (obviously). The cam gear pullers worked equally as well.

At this point I had everything off that needed to come off in order to pull the crank, this is when I ran into my next problem, I couldn’t get the crank out.  There is no specialty tool for this, one manual I read says that it should pull out, another said that it has to be beat out. I decided to pickup a rubber mallet to avoid mushrooming the crank shaft and I beat the crap out of the shaft for a good 30 minutes, nothing. Next I decided to take the advice of people from RMH and the triumphchoppers web site, as one of the guys simply put it: “heat it and beat it”. A couple others suggested a lead hammer or deadblow hammer.  Another trip to the auto parts store, but no hammer, so I picked up a $16 torch and decided to give it a try with the rubber mallet again.

I got home and fired up the torch and heated the case around the crank shaft. I heated it for about a minute or two and gave it some smacks with the rubber mallet, nothing.  I repeated this a few times and after giving it enough heat the crank finally started to move. Once it started to move I didn’t have to apply any more heat, I just kept at it with the hammer, and after a couple dozen hits the crank was finally free.  This finally allowed me to pull the damaged piston and connecting rod, the picture to the right shows the obvious damage.

Mr. Horsepower says:  “This piston is shit, it needs to be replaced.  What kind of shape is the crank in?”

And that’s when it happened...

While waiting for the connecting rods and pistons to get here, I fell into a common trap of many a people when tearing into their bikes.  I was looking at the rocker boxes and the cylinder head when it happened, I grabbed the nearest rocker box and thought, while I’m in here...

That crank isn’t in good shape, Mr. Horsepower.  From the picture you can see that the right hand side journal was scored, it’s no longer smooth to the touch but it still seems round.  I’ll look into having it ground down to the next size and get some oversized bushings for the connecting rod.  Hopefully that will save me from having to toss the crank and replace it.  Once the connecting rods and pistons get here, I’ll head down to British Cycle Supply to see what they can do and to get a new cylinder block setup for the new pistons.

Disassembling the rocker boxes was easy enough, basically just had to drive the rod through the rocker box.  I had to heat the box up a little to get one of the rods out and I used a rubber mallet so I didn’t damage anything. Ideally I’ll try to get the boxes blasted to clean them up a bit.

Next I saw the cylinder head sitting there, with the springs and valves still installed. This just didn’t seem right since I had everything else apart.  The problem was that I didn’t have any kind of valve spring compressor in order to remove the valves. I was talking to Bep and he ended up posting a question on the Triumph Chopper list about the best type of compressor.  British Cycle Supply sells a compressor for about $50, but I saw a c-clamp style in the Princess Auto catalog for $30.  It was a generic compressor but the price was better, so at lunch I drove over and picked one up, along with a brass hammer, since they were on sale.

The pictures to the left show how the compressor works, it came with three different sized end pieces, I chose the smallest one.  The middle picture shows one of those magnets on the end of a stick in place to prevent the little half circle pieces from falling away.

The clamp worked great, I compressed the spring allowing me to remove the necessary pieces and then I backed it out until the springs were slack and could be easily removed. After removing the springs and valves I used different colored electrical tape to attach the little stays to each of the valves, then I stuck a piece of tape to some cardboard and wrote down which position in the head they were from.

So after this I’d have to say that the c-clamps get the thumbs up, the question is: now what?  I’m still waiting for the parts I need.  I guess I could start stripping the paint from the frame or look into what’s involved in doing a head job, what the hell’s involved in a head job?

Teardown Completed

At this point the teardown is pretty much complete, this point being mid November. I’ve received my replacement connecting rods from Richard off the Triumph Choppers list down in Texas. Once I got the rods I took the crank down to a Napa machine shop that British Cycle Supply uses. They were able to grind the crank down 010, I can get new 010 bearing from BCS, turns out I didn’t need the connecting rods for this procedure, so I could have had it done sooner.  My next purchase will be the bearings and a new intake cam bushing, and possibly a drift in order to get the current bushing out.

The crank looks pretty good now, they stamped it so that you can tell what size bearings are needed and they smoothed out the end, which was a bit mushroomed, which you can see in the picture of the crank in a previous picture.  The picture to the far right is of the crank after the work and the connecting rods. 

I’m getting ready to put the guts back into the case.  I took a little time to try and clean up the cases a bit. When I got down to really cleaning them I could see that they were pretty beat up, nothing serious but lots of little nicks and scrapes, no big deal.  I’ll need to pick myself up some assembly lube and gasket cement for the cases.

The picture above shows the right hand case, doesn’t look too bad in the picture, or IRL. Unfortunately a closer look, to the left, shows the bolt that I snapped off at the top, and a small fracture by the hole in the bottom left. I’ll be taking this to a machine shop as soon as I get a chance to see if this can be fixed.

I decided to take the case to the same machine shop that did the work on the crank, I had three things for them to do, fix the crack in the case by the gearbox, remove a broken stud in the case by the gearbox and insert a new cam bushing.  I left the case with them and 1 week and $100 later I had my case back.

I decided to start assembling the engine on Friday night (Dec. 14/02). I was armed with my locktite, some assembly lube, some bearing grease, a shop manual, Haynes manual, parts book, a Mighty Mighty Bosstones CD, and a curiosity as to whether or not I could get it back together.

The first thing I did was to see how well the intake cam felt in the new bushing, much to my dismay I was shocked to find that the intake cam didn’t fit the new bushing, it was just a bit too big. I don’t get how this was possible, I bought the right part, so it should fit.  When I dropped the case with the bushing off to the machine shop I was asked it the bushing was sized for the cam, of course, I thought, it’s the right part number. So I told them it was. Well, in my ignorance I didn’t realize that it would actually have to be reamed in order to fit, live and learn.  So rather than drive back down the following week I decided to look for a machine shop that was a little more handy.  I found one just down the street from where I work, an old guy doing it out of his garage. He was open on Saturday, which was perfect, so I ran over and dropped off the necessary side of the case and the cam. Within two hours I was able to pick it up and take it back home and try to start the rebuild again.

My first step was to run the connecting rods through the parts washer one more time, just to get rid of any dust that may have been on them, and then to insert the bearing shells into the connecting rod and end cap.  I put some assembly lube on the bearing shells and mounted them to the crank. Next I put some lube on one end of the crank shaft and slid it into the right hand case.

The first step, after the cleaning of course, was to put the case on a couple blocks of wood so that end of the crank could go all the way in, then I placed the roller bearing into the case.  Next I put some assembly lube on the end of the crank and placed it into the case, followed by the intake and exhaust cams.

I applied a conservative amount of gasket cement (this stuff) to one half of the case.  It took a little pushing but it finally went together. I started tightening down the bolts and then decided to make sure everything moved freely. I was quite disappointed when the intake cam shaft, the one that received the new bushing, wouldn’t budge.  I couldn’t turn it at all.  The crank turned and the exhaust cam turned, but not the intake cam.  What the hell, it spun when the cases weren’t together.  Again, this was due to an oversite on my part as well as the machine shops for not mentioning that this may happen, but when the new bushing was put in I had only dropped off half the case.  Turns out that the machine shop couldn’t line it up without the other half and the bushing wasn’t lined up directly with the bushing on the other case, so the cam wasn’t running straight and was pushed against one side of the bushing, preventing it from turning.

The following week I dropped off both sides of the case, along with the cam and asked if he could straighten me out, he did it that day and by Monday night, after removing all the gasket cement, I was ready to start the rebuild once again.

Once these parts were in place I put the gasket cement on the case and lowered the other half into place, then I bolted everything together and double checked that the cams and crank were still turning easily without areas of resistance. Everything works pretty good, I’ll have to take the extra gasket shit off the engine once it congeals a little.  The bolts have been tightened but I haven’t used any locktite on them.  I plan on replacing the lock washers with new ones, at which point I’ll locktite all the bolts. In the picture the end of the crankshaft looks damaged, I gave it a closer look and it’s fine, so it must be a trick of the light in the picture.  Next, timing gears and oil pump.

I consulted the manual to see how the timing gears should go on, since I didn’t mark anything when I pulled them off. According to the manual the key that goes between the cam shafts and the timing gears should go in the keyway that is opposite the timing mark on the gear.  The problem is, the gear has 3 keyways on it, an none of them are on the opposite side of the timing mark.  There’s a keyway right by the timing mark, I have to assume that this is the right one, so I used the cam puller to replace the two timing gears, and then crank gear, which went on with some light tapping.  Once the two timing gears and the crank gear were on I lined up all the timing marks towards the idler pinion and slid the idler gear into place, making sure that all the marks line up, as shown in the picture to the right.

Once the gears were in place and the nuts screwed on I went and cleaned the oil pump and slid it into place, this was by far the easiest part of the rebuild so far, the pump just slides right on, I’ll be taking it off again and adding some assembly lube before screwing it into place.

The the part of the rebuild is to get the gearbox back together. I grabbed the proper box of parts and my manuals to see if I could fit them all back into the proper place.

 It took a little effort to slide the gears back into the case in one unit, but I managed to do it without pulling any hair out, so I consider that to be somewhat of a triumph.

The inner gearbox cover slides on pretty easily, the only thing to watch for is that the mechanism for changing the gears has to be lined up when sliding it into place. With this is place, and another gasket, the outer cover can be slid into place. The kick-start had to be wound backwards one full turn to tighten up the spring so that it comes back after it's kicked. While holding the kicker in place it was just a matter of sliding the assembly on.

Once the gears were in place and everything seemed to spin nicely I threw on the gasket and got ready to put on the cover. The gasket is a multiyear one, so it's got an extra opening that you can see in the next pic.

With everything back in place for the gearbox, except the shifter itself, I pushed the kicker down and it was nice and smooth, and turned the gears, so all seems good at this point.  With the gearbox back together I should let you know that this was basically just a test fit, I plan on going back and tightening everything down to spec and locktiting what should be locktited. I won't have to pull the gears out, but the covers will come off again, this shouldn't take long. Next I plan on flipping the engine over and working on the primary. I'm getting to the point where I need to finish cleaning the frame so I can paint it and have it ready to put the engine back in.

I grabbed my box with the clutch parts and took a look, pretty dirty, but still usable.  I’ll have to run them through the parts washer (except for the clutch plates) and mount them into the drum.

The drum itself is starting to show signs of wear, but I should be able to get another season out of it.

Once the parts are cleaned up I’ll get them back in the hub and into the primary case, which is fairly decent shape. In the meantime I put the sprocket on, tightened down the bolt and bent down the ears on the washer to keep the bolt in place.

I’m gonna change gears for a minute here and step away from the engine and get back to stripping the paint from the frame.

Basically I just took a wire wheel, a drill, a face mask and some time.  The frame cleaned up fairly well, and the nice thing about stripping all the paint off is that you can inspect it for any problem areas. In the center picture to the right you can see the new placement of the fender, which has simply been rotated forward to give the back end more of a bobber look to it. If you go back to the top you can see the old placement and tail light, the middle picture also shows the new sparto tail light I’ll be using.

The last of these three pictures shows where some stretch has been added to the front downtube.  While grinding the paint off I hit an area that seemed to have some extra primer.  As I continued to grind I began to realize that it wasn’t primer, but filler. I kept grinding to see how deep it was, it wasn’t too bad, and I eventually came to more metal.

I assume that the downtube was cut and a smaller tube put inside and then welded at both ends to add the length, then the filler was added to give it the same thickness as the original downtube.  I’ll remove the rest of the filler and add new stuff before I paint the bike.

In the middle picture above you can see that there isn’t much in the way of a mount for the battery box. Basically that little tab sticking out by the rear fender acts like a springboard and the battery shakes like crazy when the bikes running. To remedy this I decided to have a big plate welded to the rear tail section, I’ll use this to mount the battery box and miscellaneous electrical components. Below you can see the size and placement of the plate I’m talking about, on the picture to the left you can see the size difference in what was there and what will be there.

Yes, that’s card board from a cat litter box.  At least those damned cats are good for something. :-)

You can see the size difference in the old plate and the new one, should make the battery much more stable.  It didn’t take long for me to get the tail section back, it was done by the neighbor of my sister-in-law and her husband (good friend).  He’s a welder by profession and did a good job at a good price.

I’m still in cosmetic mode at the moment.  I can be a bit lazy, so rather than clean the engine covers myself, I decided to have them powder coated black, and while I was at it I had the rocker boxes and head media blasted. The primary cover, well, all the covers for that matter, were a bit dinged up, so rather than a nice glossy black that would highlight all these dings, I went with with what the powder coater called “textured” black.  It’s similar to Harley’s wrinkle black but a little smoother. It turned out pretty good, I’m getting anxious to see what it will look like all together now.

I had the sparto tail light done too. I’ll likely have the rear fender done as well, the frame and gastank will likely just get a coat of flat black for this season.

The pictures on the right are of the heads and rocker boxes before and after they’ve been media blasted, much better than what they were looking like before.  They still have to be cleaned to get rid of the left over grit, but I think I’ll leave them the dull gray without polishing them.  I’ve been told it’ll help them dissipate heat, plus it’ll go with the flat black rat rod look I’m going for.

I had also ordered a set of the stainless steel bolts from Northern Eagle. The old bolts were either rusty, stripped, or missing. The new bolts look great with the black covers.

I got a bit behind in my updating, so the following paragraphs are from my posts in rec.motorcycles.harley, not a lot of pics at the start.

April 15, 2003, I checked the mailbox yesterday and inside I found one of those keys that let's me know I've got a package in one of the larger mailboxes, I almost wet myself. I open up the larger mailbox and there it is, a package containing my new used cylinder block. I rush home to find my parents are visiting, no time to talk, gotta open box. Buried under a mound of shredded paper is the cylinder block, needs a little cleaning but looks to be in good shape, no rust, there cylinder walls are seem nice and clean, so I'm pleased with my $40 purchase off e-bay, mind you the shipping was another $32.

Now that I've got it, I've got to figure out a couple things that I'm not sure about. The guy that sold it said it had a 060 over bore, but currently I have no way of confirming this. Also, I said the cylinders looked good, but I'm no professional and I'm not sure what to look for. So right now I don't know if I'll need to have them rebored, honed, or left as is, and not being 100% on the size of the bore, I can't order pistons quite yet. So while I'm excited that they're finally here, my excitement is tempered by a feeling of "ok, now what?". I'm thinking that I'll have to give British Cycle Supply a call to see if I can bring down the cylinder and have them check the size. If they can't do it then there is a machine shop that they use that should be able to help me out. One thing I don't like is going into it ignorant, they could easily tell me that I need to bore it to 080 over and that I need to get 080 pistons, which could very well be the case, but I'd hate to think that all I needed was 060 pistons and to have the cylinders honed. Oh well, I guess it's a matter of trust.

Telephone call to BCS: OK, just talked to Gary at BCS, he said that I could take it to a place (he gave me the name of one near them and the name of one near me) and said that they could inspect the cylinders and drop a dial gauge down through to see what the current size is. Depending on the size I would either have to have them bored or left alone. I could then order up some new pistons from BCS, I would go with the cheapest they got since I'll eventually put on a big bore kit, and our riding season isn't too long so they won't wear out real quick. $120 Canadian for a pair of cheapys, including the rings, which is manageable.

Well I guess it just goes to show that you can't be sure of what you buy when you use e-bay. I took the cylinder to a place that BCS recommended and according to the guy there the cylinder is at .020 over (based on a stock measurement of 2.795) and I can get away with leaving it at that bore and just having them honed. Looks like I might be able to get away with this cylinder for a bit longer than I originally thought when I bought and was thinking it was .060, assuming I don't smash the skirt on it. <g> So I'm a happy camper, and they said they can have the cylinders ready for tomorrow ($14 per side versus $45 to have them bored).  Time to order up some cheapy .020 over pistons, I wonder if they can have them here before good Friday. <g>

I got my rocker boxes together last night, but by the time I had the spindles all the way in the oil feed holes weren't facing straight up, which means they wouldn't line up with the holes in the banjo fittings. It's up in the air right now as to whether or not they have to be lined up, since the oil may actually travel around the spindle, but to be on the safe side I'm going to line them up.

Well, I tried to line up the holes last night by bending the oil lines (they're metal, not flexible tubing) but I ended up breaking one of the arms. I would have heated them up first but all I've got is a torch and it was empty. For those who can't picture this, there's a metal line that comes off the return line from the oil pump, this line then T's and ends in 2 banjo connectors that slide of the rocker box spindles. The oil enters the spindles and oils the innards of the rocker boxes.

After three hours working on the rocker boxes, the gear box covers and the clutch, I'm ready to take a look at what it'll look like once it's done. So here are some shots of a mockup, as well as a before shot of the engine and 2 shots of the rockers after they've been reassembled. I drove out the rocker spindles and put them back in so that the oil feed holes will line up with the banjo connections on the new oil line, but I've been told that there's a grove that goes around the inside of the banjo connections anyway. Oh well.

Engine before teardown

Engine mockup

In the second picture of the mockup you can see that there's still some black paint that is on the left side of the case in the front, I assume at one point the whole case was black. It didn't wash off easily so it'll be left there for this season. The pictures make it look better than it is, but it's still a lot better than it was. Anyway, it's about 2:20am now, time for bed.

I wasn't sure what I'd get done this weekend since I had a work function I was suppose to go to yesterday and a couple family things for Easter. Fortunately Jake (my boy) puked all over the place Wednesday night and hasn't been feeling well since then, so while he's been laying on the couch and sleeping the weekend away, I got to work on the bike. I owe him big for the sacrifice he's making for me. <g>

The lower end is pretty much done, I'll take the covers off until the engine has been wrestled back into the frame, just some minor details like adjusting the clutch to be done. The rocker boxes are back together and a new rocker box oil feed line is on order. The frame has a couple coats of primer and a coat of flat black, to which I'll be adding a couple more coats, likely next weekend. Today I finally stripped the paint off the gas tank and took a look inside, a bit of rust in there but it looks like a very thin layer, so I went to google and I think I'll give the muriatic acid method a try next weekend. I started to strip the rear fender but quickly realized that it was cracked in numerous places and had more holes in it than a slice of swiss cheese, so I think I'll order a new one, there only about $45 CDN new from British Cycle Supply. I also took a quick look at the valves, lots of build-up on the top of the exhaust valves and springs, so I'll have to clean all of this off before I attempt to re-seat them and install them back in the head, I'll try to get at this tonight or some other night this week.

I got my pistons today, so tonight I got myself psyched up to install them, what a disappointment.  I was expecting this to be some magical, mystical event, but much to my dismay the whole process took about 5 minutes. The only part that gave me pause was when I picked up the locktite instead of the assembly lube. So once I got the pistons on I decided to clean one of the valves, figure since I was working on the bike I may as well get something else done.

My new pistons should be here tomorrow, so some night this week I'll try to get them installed and get the cylinder back on. Once this is done, and the frame got a couple more coats, I'll put the engine back in the frame, then I'll put the head and rockers back on.

I'm expecting the next step to be a little trickier, sliding the cylinder block down over those pistons once the rings are in place. I'll pick up a couple hose clamps tomorrow and give it a try tomorrow night.

I got a chance to sneak down to the basement again tonight and it was time to tackle the cylinder block. This went surprisingly well. My first step was to remove the tappet blocks from the old cylinder block, replace the o-rings and install them into the new cylinder block. Next I took my newly acquired hose clamps and tightened them around the rings, they covered all three rings at once. Once both clamps were in place, tight enough to compress the rings, but loose enough to slide when pushed, I lower the cylinder block down over them. The blocks went down nice and smooth, and once they covered all the rings I loosened the clamps and removed them. The cylinders in the picture look copper, weird trick of the light when I took the picture. If you look closely you'll see pieces of rubber hose that I cut and slid over the studs on the case in order to protect the piston skirts.

The rubber hose worked really well, until one of them lifted off and dropped into the case. It fell right to the bottom but standing straight up. I couldn't reach it with my needle nose pliers, so I tried a large flathead screwdriver that I pushed into the tube, turns out it worked great.