Rebuilt engine back in!

As usual, click any image to zoom in.


It was a lovely, sunny day yesterday. Mark and I started work at 11am and by 8pm all the tools were away.

It wasn't too bad a job really - removed the seat, petrol tank, rear mudguard, chainguard, chain, carb, exhaust, engine and then put it all back together.






Once the new engine was in we filled up the oil tank and gearbox and Mark ran the bike up and down the road with the spark plug out and in gear to get the oil round the engine until we could see the oil return pumping oil.

The bike fired up first kick, which was nice!

We had a bit of trouble starting the bike a while later because the clutch needed adjusting (adjustment bolt was too tight).

I was sitting on the bike ready to ride home when it cut out and we couldn't get it started again.

I left it at Mark's overnight and we had another go this morning, adjusting the timing, and were fast running out of ideas when Mark suggested changing the spark plug. At that point he noticed that the rebuilt engine had a Champion N4C plug and not the recommended N5C. It started first time with the N5C plug in...

Air Filter - Part Deux

As usual, click any image to zoom in.

The first attempt at a replacement air filter (see the blog entry here) has worked fine but Mark noticed that the cloth part of the filter hasn’t survived too well as you can see in the photo on the left

 

While we were out for a ride today, Mark picked up a set of “Splatter screens” from B&M for £1.29 and has made up a replacement inner part of the filter by cutting out two circular elements and mounting them at approximately 45º to each other to form a diagonal mesh.

 

He has been very careful with big, heavy scissors and managed to cut out both the circles from the larger splatter screen. There is still room for a third circle from the larger screen so not that I’m tight or anything but I’ll be able to make a replacement for mine from the same set. Cushty.

 

 

Blog stats

As usual, click any image to zoom in.

Luigi convinced me that it would be a good idea for him^H^H^Hme to set up this blog so that we would have a record of the work we have done on our bikes for our future reference.

Seven months in and the blog has had hits from a fair part of the globe - I hope they aren't all because of those "VIAGRA" meta-tags I've been sneaking into the pages.

Torque settings

Mark saw something yesterday on a web site along the lines of "When you replace the cylinder head, it is necessary to tighten the bolts to a predetermined torque. For the C15 it is 28 ft/lbs"  which I am sure is very true. In fact, how could it be more than merely true? But I digress.

You can read yourself silly worrying, but I can remember in my day, when the world was in black and white, nobody used a torque wrench.  They probably never heard of one and certainly couldn't spell it.  

If you under-tightened the bolts the engine leaked and as long as you weren't a total moron you didn't over-tighten the bolts and strip the threads.  Everybody's bike worked... Simples.

Having said that, I know someone who claims he rode his bike with a loose dizzy and noticed his exhaust pipe actually glowing one Winter's night and ended up blowing more big-ends than he cares to remember...

New head gasket

As usual, click any image to zoom in.

It’s been sunny for weeks and today it decides to rain. At least we were able to work in Mark’s garage while we replaced the head gasket on his C15 to try to cure the oil leak.

It seems a little better now in that the top of the crankcase and the vertical part of the exhaust pipe are now dry, but there is still a leak from somewhere putting a light film of clean oil on the front of the gearchange rubber, the bottom half of the crankcase (below the gearchange lever) and the vertical downpipe of the frame on that side.