La Macchina - a sidecar wheel (part 3)

 When it comes to engineering decisions, I am mostly a very sensible person. Some would even go as far as to consider to call me a stereotypical engineer. But even I have feelings. 

Two-tone 2CV wheels? Yes, Smart car wheels would have only cost marginally more are hub-centered and don't need special paperwork to be run with a 135/70R15 tyre. So we're making an adapter for a bolt-centered wheel. As you'll find out this is only the prototype to see, if it's the right size etc. Thus it will be made from steel. 

Base plate is 200x200mmx40mm, the tube is some thick-wall seamless 100x60mm that I chose so it would fit over a pair of 6204-2RS ball bearings.

Marked out a 160mm bolt hole circle and inscribed the 3 mounting holes with a caliper.

Bored the tube for the bearings to go in with a nice satisfying press-fit.

Quick test fit on the axle - will need a little spacer, but other than that...

Drilling a 60mm hole (with a press-fit) turned out to be quite the task and kept me busy for at least two or three hours, especially as my biggest drill bit is 20mm and I had some serious deflection issus, i.e. the hole became an odd shaped taper, because I got a bit greedy with the boring bar.

Then it was back to the lathe to make sure I could turn it into something round. 

Parts of an old Lada Niva brake piston found its way onto the axle to act as a spacer.

Call me a chicken, but in the end I laid down a few weld beads, just to be sure.

When classic engineering and trigonometry works:

As you can tell by the following two pictures: 

This looks pretty cool and the order of events as presented in this build is completely broken, which is mainly due to the fact that I often worked on multiple things at the same time, because I had to wait on parts, etc. After a few short testrides it became apparent that the basic design is sound and that a second version made from aluminium is definitely the way forward.

As I bought an offcut, I ended up with a slightly beefier wheel flange than initially planned. 

 

The rest of the work was pretty much the same, except everything goes a lot quicker in aluminium.

 Quick test-fit on the wheel:

Press the center tube with the bearings in and install it. (Once more with a cheeky little weld on the back-side just for good measure.)

La Macchina - making her rideable (part 2.1)

 It's time to catch up a bit - not only is the old Guzzi registered by now (as a solo), but is actually almost ready to get re-registered as a sidecar. 

Somewhere along the way the red tank turned black...

 

... and then it was time to rejet the carbs - those floorboards are actually really, really handy.

Jetting, which works rather well with cheap pod filters and the stock exhaust:

Mainjet: 130
Pilot: 50
Needle: K18/3
Starter jet: 70
Atomiser: AR268 

Next stop was an oil-change.

 A bit of oil on the choke cable (only to burn through the sheath a little later, because I routed it too close to the exhaust).

And afterwards do the most racing thing I know - turn an old oil bottle into a catch can. (If you ever get the chance to look under the hood or work on an older F1 car... you'll find them everywhere.)

I also got me a set of reasonably priced cast wheels - guess what the seller forgot to mention in the advertisement.

 ... and lastly there was the task of converting a Cagiva Elefant right-side handlebar control, so I could get rid of the enormous throttle cable assembly on the Guzzi. (Which in my case was broken and wouldn't stay put on the bars.)

Turns out, they are identical internally and are just using different plugs at the end. 

Throw in a bit of the usual maintenance and the old girl passed her inspection without the slightest problem. The fact that I was rather lucky to make it back home... well that was something I didn't know about. 

 

Everyday TR1 - ... you build a new engine (part 2)

 With the attempt at welding the old case having completely and miserably failed, I decided to assess the situation and move my internals into a new case and while at it make an early health check.

Gave the cases a good clean up as they'd been sitting on the shelf for at least ten years in my various garages and check the oil-drain plug threads, just to be sure.

Next was the oil-pressure relieve valve, just to make sure it wasn't stuck. (It was not.) 

As my BT1100/XVS1100 (V-star for the Americans) cylinders hadn't given me any trouble over the last 40,000km, I decided to use them again. (Just in case I have a spare set though.)

In the past I did this mod in a rather "medieval" fashion, by boring the hole with HUGE holesaws, which nearly broke my wrist once. This time I went with an 80 grit flap wheel on a die grinder and let me tell you, this is simply the best way aside from getting it done on a mill with a boring head. (My mill's too small, in case you're wondering.)

Took about 5 minutes per bore and if you're a bit consistent, it's still reasonably round. 

After all you only have to take out about 2mm on the diameter, so that was nice and easy. (It is rather dusty though, so one could postpone the cleaning of the inside of the case to after this step.)The finish is pretty spectacular though.

As the case had been sitting for a while one new OEM ball bearing was bought and it was painfully expensive. 

 At this point the cases were as far as I could get with them without the internals, so engine-out-o-clock it was. 

So here is, where it was leaking from lately.

Temporary increase of workbench area.

Another one of the "glad I checked" moments along the line of this build, was when I removed the oil-pump screen and cleaned it very, very thoroughly. 

Pistons and cylinders were looking very nice, so I wrapped some cardboard round them to prevent them from getting damaged during the crank removal. (Also I didn't have any new gudgeon pin clips, so I didn't want to remove the pistons except when I absolutely had to.)

 Cases split, no real surprises except that the right side bearing seat had gone from "not very tight" to "rather loose" and the bearing had some signs of corrosion on it and decided to much rather stay on the crank instead. 

 Just for comparison, this is the sort of "finish" the holesaw left on the case, compared to what the flap-wheel does. 

 

Pressing the crank out without removing the oil-pump sprocket is very straight forward, but while some people directly push on the bearing, I made a little spacer years ago. 

 

Crank is looking very good with the rods removed. (Didn't even bother measuring, if it was out of round, because even the bearing shells look like new.) 

Here you can see how this right bearing spun in the case, which was pretty much the only thing I found to be mechanically wrong with the engine. 

Pressed the old bearing out of the new case as well as it become a bit crunchy from sitting so long. 

 

Then put the engine case on a little hot plate (and had the new bearing in the freezer over night) - falls right in place.

 Just to make my life easier, I then heated the other case half on the hot plate and sprayed the remaining bearing with ice-spray.

 

Dropped in the gearbox and then made another mistake by installing the clutch-fork guide-rod upside down.

Even managed to align it nicely 180 degrees out.

Literally with all the confidence I could muster at this point, I decided, it's f*cked already, might as well try and tack it in place. 

 

The assembly then went moderately well. Started by pre-filling the oil pump as that helps a lot with priming it. 

 Circling back to the oil-leak mentioned during disassembly, I decided to try something new and fill up this cavity with silicone, so the rubber gromet had more surface to butt up against. (So far it's working.)

 In order to install the right-side scissor wheel, there's a little trick in the form of the hole that's visible when aligning the dots. You can put a punch through and it'll allow you to tension the spring, making (correct) installation a lot more easy.

 Clutch hub nut is tightened first, then comes the crank nut. Manual suggests to use some leather to block the gears. It does work admittedly, but the gloves don't survive the abuse. 

In order to convert from the oil-level sender to an actual oil-pressure switch, the case needs to be drilled. I am going with an oil-pressure switch from a Volvo 240 with the classic B-series engine with a thread pitch of M10x1.0 and admittedly a bit of silicone around the base just to be sure. 

In order to get the squish-gap a little closer - no base gasket, just some silicone. (Check clearances first though.)

Swapped the old ball bearings for some new C3-clearance ones and guess what, they really are less noisy as they allow for some ever so slight misalignment. (Most difficult part about this modification is to get the metal shield off.)

 Time up the rear cylinder and be done with the first half of timing.

Other side is more of the same, except... 

You have to turn the engine over 275 degrees to be at the right TDC. Guess who had sleepless nights etc. (Also with used cam-chains, the mark will not align perfectly.)
 

Quickly cleaned the (normally inaccessible) swingarm area and greased the bearings. Then attached the frame to the engine. 

 With all the timings triple checked, installed the camshaft bolts with loctite.

Safety wired the sprocket, because Loctite is nice, but getting the sprocket clean enough for it to definitely work is absolutely impossible. 

Also wanna guess which finger of the lates gloves I wore had a little tear in it? 😂

 Little something I wanted to do for ages as well: Stamp the cases with the correct TDC markings for each cylinder.

 "Quick" re-assembly of the bike:

 So I fired it up... 

... and it only ran on one cylinder at idle. So I did *ALL* the troubleshooting.

Interestingly enough, the valves were sealing *JUST* well enough that if you spun the engine over quickly, it would actually build pressure.

 Back to square two or something like that, fish the old XV700 heads out and get back to those.

Quick test-fire and it just check out the difference - sounds so smooth, when it's not firing out the exhaust.

 

 

Weirdly enough, I could sync the carbs perfectly via the idle screws...

 

... but not at higher RPMs. Turns out, I must have stretched and damaged one of the cables, whilst I had the bike lying on its side during the repairs.

 Pulled out a new 2in1 cable, opened up the splitter and (gently) clamped it in the vise to use the tops as funnels to properly oil the cables. 

 Bit of heat-shrink on the adjuster as I found that rain-water finds its way into the cable otherwise.

 

But there's a happy end after all. Old girl cracked the 140,000km mark, is not leaking and running nicely again. 

 

Which is a rather nice ending to this three week ordeal and I am mighty happy to report it's over.