Wednesday, 21 May 2014

Diversions

En-route to Norway this week, I read Noel Whittall's 'A Stupid Thing to Do':


An amusing and inspiring read. Thanks Noel!

Norway is as beautiful as ever:

Akerhus Fortress

Aker Brygge, from Akerhus

Akerhus again

Trial Fitting Ancilliaries

Dynamo drops in OK. New gasket, greased one side, Threebond the other:


Trial fitting the carburettor. I'm concerned where the second fuel tap will go, and I quite see why it would have been deleted. Since I have no crossover pipe I am not sure what to do here.




Later that day I witnessed a man turning into a Sousaphone...


Orkestra del Sol at the Norfolk & Norwich Festival!

Monday, 19 May 2014

Exhausts... Left or right, big or small?

So I have these lovely pipes from Feked... But which way round do they go? I also have the square head bolts and their brackets from Acme, and they just make the puzzle worse:

Timing side. Small kink?
Or big kink?
Drive side. Big kink?
Or small kink?
With the small kink on the drive side the pipe appears to sit inside the brake pedal and prop stand more neatly, and the big kink on the timing side allows the pipe to sit inside the swing of the kickstart. 

Is that right?

The head is on!

So we are all set. The sun is shining, I have a day free (after cutting the grass and making the family dinner) and I have all the parts, plus a very nice text from Bruce Longman via Draganfly with explicit instructions. Max is in bed, so he will be happy for a bit:


A Chocolate Sprocker, feeling very 'Sunday Morningish'
I have some high temperature silicone gasket as recommended by Bruce. Loctite say this is suitable for operating temperatures up to 275 degrees C (sustained) with excursions to 300 C:


So as recommended by Bruce, we start by laying a band of sealant around the pushrod tunnels, on both sides of the gasket. Actually easier to lay one bead on the gasket, and one bead on the block, making sure you have the handed gaskets the right way around:




No picture, but next I placed all the head nuts in position between the cylinder block fins, under their holes, with the flanges upward. Next, manoeuvre the head under the frame tube and drop it into place over the studs, making sure the extended, rounded ends of the studs drop into the nuts. Add the sleeve nuts inside the rocker boxes, and the 5/16" CEI reduced hex nuts outside the rocker boxes. You hand screw these down finger tight.

And as Kees Knegt pointed out in a comment to an earlier post, this would have been easier without the rockers! You cannot fit the pushrods with the rockers in place either (they don't slide sideways far enough) so I may as well have left them off... although I do like to trial fit everything at least once.

Next, with your thinnest 5/16" CEI open spanner, engage all the nuts on the downward facing head studs and turn them as far as they will go without using and force. You will realise now that if you leave one undone, and tighten the others, you will crack a fin by virtue of the loose nut pushing downward onto the fin below.

Once you have all the nuts finger tight you will see the head finally come down onto the gaskets. continue going around all the nuts inside & outside the rocker boxes until they are all snugged down finger tight.


You will need a variety of spanners to achieve this. The reduced hex nuts in the middle of the head, under the inlet tract are particularly inaccessible.


So, when everything is snugged down, use Bruce's torque figures and sequence to tighten down the head.

Job done.

Friday, 16 May 2014

Huntmaster Rises up

The start of a build, in my book, is the frame & centre stand. The stand is essential to give the frame a stable start in life.

It was a bit worn:


Not a good picture, i wish I had taken a better one. I added some 16 SWG steel sheet, and a dose of this:


And some of this:


And now I have a couple of these:



Wednesday, 14 May 2014

More bits...

Some more great parts from Acme Stainless:


Chain adjusters and rear shock absorber bolts for the Huntmaster, and reduced hex 5/16" nuts for Amelia's cylinder head.

This is what the end of the speedo cable looks like - posted here for someone that asked a question: