Gents, in the Forums absence I’ve had a bit of a medical development. Started with a few little tiny pinhead blood blisters on my belly. Consult internet, go see Dr. Dr say nah it nothing after he googled it. Ok. 6 months later I turned diabetic, Dr says unlucky take pills, I go keto before pills, nope, take pills. On 25th December start digestion issues, though I had picked up bug doing a unit Reno shower toilet area. Told doc, man there’s lots of it through the day way more than normal and not pissing it my arse. No that’s actually pretty normal. Weight down from 75kg to 60kg now but stable. I 6 weeks later, Nah Doc somethings is wrong! Ok Ultrasound. Come back, doc says liver is a little swollen, your Rh ventricular is shagged get a Heart scan. Get ones of those new whippy ones done. Chatting the scan operator ( 6 years University just to learn the machine, impressive kit), I got to hear the sound bite. Mate that sounds rather healthy to me. Yep me too. Thought so otherwise I would have pegged out on my industrial brush cutter clearing slopes last week.

Get new Doctor. Holy shit. Get CT scan. Nasty. 3.5cm mass non operable wrapped around pancreas neck. Biopsy, T3 no spread, yep death sentence zone. Nuts. Bevel blow bag needs to go together for inheritance. Send crank away, start Chemo 2 weeks after finding out the joyous news. Which by the way was right up there with “What, Iraq has just rolled into Kuwait. How far away. 350km. That my English friend is a lot closer than you think. Have we got guns. Nope. Bullets, bombs? Nope. (Fit blokey Australia barrage of expletives here, with humour of course)

Harm and Harné came to party at back to classics. Speedy turnaround.

Chemo smashes you, you come up, then they smash you again. (Lucky I played this game 26 years ago) so planned in the build included to include the “no Jesus” it’s only a nut slow approach you get as you come up. That’s how I managed the patience. Drug induced! Let’s hear for industrial quality drugs.😄 (PS medical hooch works if anyone is interested

Good news, last Wednesday PET scan day, no spread, no activity. Being reduced to scar tissue. Score! What’s my next expected dance with the parasitic rouge cell mob. Dr, 5-10+ years. Last time it was 2-3 maybe 5, got 26 years. Yep result, and in the wee small percentage of survivors zone. Doing more chemo and death ray for kicks and giggles, nah, finish coarse and margin clearing.

Back to bikes. I located a major issue and fixed it. Machining cases and new bearing retaining rings and the Vertical cylinder, new old good set of crank halves I sent to Back to classics in the Netherland, to supply Carrillo rods and balance to road with Pistal pistons. Harm is on the ball. 0.01 high end of shaft, same plain, opposite site on my mill attached balance rig. That’s really good. It could have had a drop in transit. A strategic smack, on the money, ready to fit. Harm contacted me and wanted to know outside flank measurement. ( standard for crank assembly) off my old crank. Nope, doing it the long way including thermal expansion calculations of metal's involved in 3 operating ranges, cool, operating, and Hot.

Finally located the legendary preload ratings for angular contact bearing off NSK. (It’s buried, but there)

Light 5 micron, medium 10micron, heavy 15 micron.

So between 10 and 15 micron preload it is. Sent the Flank figures I wanted. Harm used the appropriate thrust washers to give a 0.35 rod gap. He writes back with a 0.3- 0.35 crank shim will give the right preload. I’d calculated 0.3.

Stuck the crank in the now machined cases 0.29 too loose, 0.32 too tight, 0.3 on the money. Crank drop from holding at 90°, really really gently touch and it fell to about 170° with a gentle stop. Good enough.

Theme of the job. Tolerance 0.005-0.01mm. Across the whole engine power delivery, not gearbox, already dealt with it a while back. (I missed on Squish front to rear by 0.02 damn it) Everything’s position measured and shimmed and wiggled to parallel, square, sweet spot rotation, running and engaging. If you’re not familiar with the term Rince and repeat, do not try this at home unless you have spent time with Buddhist monk on a mountain. Patience required.

A fine example is the cam cap. New bearings, new gasket, install cap, torque with torque wrench. Rotate cam from bevel gear while all rigged in engine, Crank disconnected. Where did the very clean rotation on the lower straight/bevel gear go. Surprise a bit of screw tweaking, there it is, cam cap. Rince and repeat with shop bought standard gaskets. 3 out of 5 didn’t cut the mustard. Changed to Flexite branded impregnated type I cut up that don’t crush anywhere near as much, and add goo to make sure. Twirl check. Good to go.

Bevel housing on head got shunted to position with gasket change. 0.5 crush to 0.45. Tower gear needed 0.07 to be parallel with the bore and square with the cam bevel gear with 0.45. Make gaskets

It is a testament to how tough the old blow bag engine is. I ran those cases and crank for 60000 km (case’s 1980/81 and rod change at 30,000 to piss off electric start and install a kick start, crank pin had wear from thrust washer.) The crank pin had grooves in after the 60000km. Turns out main bearing retaing ring housing was 0.07mm high up around the barrel hole on the RH case from factory. Not only that, barrels mount with case joined was flat, unfortunately high on the RH half. Mill and tongue in just the right place sorted it.

Crankshaft to the vertical cylinder barrel face cam in at 0.005 LH to RH. Front barrel face was alway good at 0.015.

Any how it’s ready to fill with oil and kick over now. Pretty much the best I could rig one. Took stonking hours over the last few weeks once I finished machining and the crankshaft turned up. Don’t think it will blow up, and should get a smooth crisp engine. Cam center max lift centre set to stupidly accurate rinse and repeat at 95.5 via gear juggle. I did have them set at 98 but after test riding it previously why not. 95mains in 40mm dellorto’ and everything set up for torque without going high compression. The theory seems sound. Find out in a week or so.

Griff.