| Author | Message | ||
     Bluzm2 |
Well, The Bluz mobile lives again! It's been quite the adventure. Especially since it started out as a leaky starter gasket. Classic case of scope creep. While changing the starter gasket, I had tp pull the header to get proper access. After changing the gasket I figured it would be a good time to replace the leaky rear base gasket. So, I pull the rear cylinder. Since the rear was off, I may as well address the very slight head gasket leak in the front cylinder. Gee, since I have the cylinders off, I may as well throw in a new set of rings. So I pack up the cylinders and haul them to the cylinder guys. I didn't look at them that close, how worn could they be with 27K on them? Oops, the guy at the counter says "You really just want a soft hone to break the glaze?" I answer "Sure why not", "Well, it's gonna smoke, you have quite a bit of scoring". Now I take a closer look, there is scoring on the both cylinders. The guy goes and get's their bore gage. There is over .004" top to bottom runout! Now I need bew .010" over pistons and rings too. Of course no one in town has them so I have to order and wait for them. I'm pretty sure I figured out what hurt the motor, I'll post about that a bit later. While I wait for parts, pick up a top end gasket kit and work on the heads. I bead blast all the carbon off, pull the valves and relap the seats. Since I had a bit of time to wait, I cleaned up the intake and exhaust a bit. Not even a stage 1 type thing, just a bit of cleanup with a die grinder and sanding drums. The heads were in pretty good shape, a bit more carbon than I would expect but not too bad. After lapping the the valves, installing new seals and reassembly, I ready for the pistons and cylinders. As luck would have it, the pistons arrive the next day. Off the the cylinder folks again. They turned them around in about 4 hours for me. A quick check top and bottom showed 3.507 on both cylinders. We're good to go! Unfortunately, family stuff got in the way for almost a week before I could complete reassembly. I buttoned up everything yesterday afternoon. I hit the starter button, dead battery. I guess I should have expected that as the battery is 5 years old.... Fortunately, the HD shops are open on Sunday's for parts. A quick battery swap and I'm in business! I thumb the starter again and all I get is "clack, clack". What the??? Somewhere along the way, the starter has gone south. I hit the button a few more times and the starter engages. Before it had spun 3 revolutions, the beast came to life! Boy, it sure sounded good! I let it run for a couple of minutes and shut it down. Came back a bit later and did it again. A short time after that, I went for a short 5 minute ride. I let it cool again and went for a bit longer ride. The motor feels real strong. I can hardly wait to get on it a bit. I'll give it a few hundred miles though... It's nice to see that HD has gone to metal base gaskets. The paper ones stink. The're also really hard to get off the base of the cylinder. I tried scraping but gave up and bead blasted them off. This whole thing took much longer than I wanted, but that's usually the way these things go. These motors are so easy to work on it's actually enjoyable. A nice change of pace from the computer geek life and good therapy for me. Anyway, I think these old lumps are pretty neat looking! Here's a shot when it's almost back together.  Brad | ||
| Aaomy |
i like that blue cut cam cover,, nice... | ||
| Bluzm2 |
Thanks Aaron! I consider that high praise coming from a toolspinner such as yourself. On to the tale of the wounded motor. Originally, I thought the cylinder damage may have come from my trip to Bonneville in 2003. I ran it without the air filter element to wring out every last oz of HP it had. I needed every bit of it to get my fat butt into the 130 Club. I thought I may have sucked in a bit of raw salt. Even though the combustion temps would probably melt any salt chunks, I figured it may be possible. Improbable but possible. So last Thursday on the way home from work I passed a preschool I drive by every day. I thought to myself as I do almost every time I drive by, "Hmmm, that's the spot I was stalled last year." The "stall" happened on the way to work. I was running late as usual. I had just turned onto the hiway and had been up to speed for a 1/4 mile or so. I glanced at the speedo to make sure I wasn't going "too" fast. Then I noticed the glowing oil light. It wasn't on at the stop light but I may not have noticed it do to watching traffic. I pulled in the clutch and blipped the throttle a couple of times. No change. I seriously considered ignoring it but decided I'd better not. I pulled in the clutch, found neutral and shut off the motor. I pull onto the shoulder and coast as far as I can as I hate pushing and I was in a iffy spot on the highway. I coast to a stop in front of the above mentioned preschool. As soon as I stop, I immediately smell Mobil 1. I look down and I'm greeted with the sight of the entire lower half of the bike covered in oil. This included my pants and boots. A quick check finds the oil filter had unscrewed and allowed ALL of the oil to lube everything on the outside of the bike, including the rear tire! I grab my emergency road kit (the cell phone) and call a friend at work. A quick trip to the nearest filling station and a couple of quarts of their best stuff gets me on my way back home to clean up. The damage to the cylinders had to of occured when I dumped all the oil. It never even occured to me as I thought I caught it right away. Obviously I didn't. I wonder how bad the damage would have been if I had been using regular dinosaur oil instead of synthetic. I'm not going to try it again to find out! I now use a hose clamp to insure the filter cannot back off. This particular filter had been on there for at least 1500 miles so it can happen any time! Sorry for the rambling post but it may keep someone else from doing the same thing... A stunt like that turns a cheap gasket swap into a much more expensive and enlightning experience! Brad | ||
| Tripp |
omg, makes you want to buy one of the filters with the wire! i also saw somebody's ingenious clamp trick here on badweb, it'll only turn so far till the clamp hardware hits the motor. | ||
| Deltacruiser |
The last guy I heard a similar story from freaked me out too. I ended up putting on a K&N oil filter I bought at Autozone. About $10, but it has a hole to wire it. I wired mine to the frame. | ||
| Oldog |
whats that part number? Oh yeah like the blue cover too | ||
| Crashm1 |
Good job Brad! I got the X1 up and running. Thanks again for the loan of parts. Now I just have to figure out the girlfriends Duc (I hate syncing carbs especially when you can't get to any of the screws without losing skin on hot exhaust pipes) and put Black Betty (the Guzzi 850T) back together and I can stop bringing tools home for a while. |
