sweet sweet guzzi guzzi time time

This godawful blog – it’s so hard to remember to update it! Nothing like making more homework for yourself. Big things have happened.

I went back a few days later to address the shift return issue. I disconnected the linkage from the trans and used some vice grips on the pre-selector shaft just to see if I had any return from there – I did. So, figured the root cause must be somewhere after that – which was great news, since I didn’t feel like doing anything inside the trans anymore. My linkage was binding a bit as it was, since I used an expandable sleeve to mate the pieces – which I thought could be too tight of a fit and adding to the shift return issue. So I drilled out all the junctions to 5/16″ and installed new clevis pins. Additionally, I needed to bend the one vertical piece a hair towards the pedal linkage so there wasn’t so much tension constantly on the whole system. All of these little adjustments got my shift return back.

Now on to what you really want to hear.

Friday, May 30th was a big day for this guy. I finished up all my duties as an undergraduate – AND I started my guzzi for the first time since something like August. Here’s Charlotte that afternoon:

Shortly here after, she started. I don’t think I even got one turn of the starter before she jumped to life – it was an amazing first minute when I realized that I did something right – then the next 9 minutes or so where somewhat torture, as I had to let her run and was terrified something was going to go wrong. But she sounded very strong, idled well (enough anyway), and then she started smoking like a BEAST. With 2 front garage doors open, and one rear – and with fans blowing on the cylinders (to keep them cool), the bike still smoked 3 people out of the garage. I’ll admit, I started to freak out a bit, but I continued to let her run for the full 10 minutes.

I was hazy. I arrived at my brother’s at 4ish that day. And yes, we hit the Jameson as soon as I got there. Remember, just graduated. So I wasn’t thinking very clearly by 9 o’clock or whenever it actually was that I had the bike running. So I didn’t think about the fact that I had oiled up the pistons and cylinders, nor that the bike was pack a day smoker when I tore her down. She had a lot of lung butter to cough up.

The next morning I went back to the garage, tied up the loose ends and prepared to ride home. After that initial start up, I retorqued the heads and set the valve lash again. I did change the oil after the first 10 minutes, but after looking at the oil it was a waste – still looked brand new. I’m only using Shell Rotella T 15w-40 if ya care. Only oil I’ve ever used.

Bike started right up again Saturday morning. My brother and I went to hit the trail, and the bike was just running so sweet right off the bat. I mean, carb’s were not adjusted at all – base setting on the mix screws and a dirty check of the sync. Anyway, still the bike just felt tighter. Everything was as I had hoped – and no funny noises!

We made it 5 miles or something before she started acting hungry or something. Pulled over and wiggle some things around – I think it was just a loose spark plug wire because we were back up and running in no time.

The next 15 or so miles went without a hitch. Made it home.

That was one week ago. I’ve since put 150 miles on her [coinciding with 5 heat/cool cycles] to hit my first service. I’ve had no troubles at all, except as a result of some haphazard impromptu carb tuning [never a good idea]. Carb’s are off right now, it’s raining today so that’s on my agenda along with lots of coffee (love the weekends). Just going to give them a once over and a good cleaning. No adjustments yet. I did recently order some new jets; both up and down on the mains and pilot, just to start experimenting in the near future – curious if the b-10 will run better with different sizes. Currently, I have 45 pilots and 145 mains – I’m at 200′ or so.

Break in procedure that I’m following is sort of a mish mash of theories. Well, first the intervals and such came directly from Charlie – 10 minutes, 150 miles {and 5 heat/cool cycles], 500, 1000 and 1500 miles. At these intervals, it’s an oil change, retorque the heads and set the valve lash. I’ve got to admit, that during my first 150 miles – I checked the valve gap before every ride. It’s an easy check that gave me piece of mind. Also, I’m constantly checking everything thing all the time, looking for small leaks, or loose wires or anything. I love the mantra “whatever is wrong was the last thing you were screwing with” – which still holds very true, except the last thing I was screwing with was EVERYTHING. So I check everything, or try to.

As far as running, I’m doing my best to always be loading or unloading the motor – trying hard to avoid idling and cruising. That includes running stop signs and red lights, or making a series of right hand turns instead of trying to make a left. I definitely am not babying the motor. There’s no whacking of the throttle either, I probably haven’t ventured past 1/3 throttle – instead I’m letting the gears run high and then engine breaking back down. Rev up, coast down. I haven’t held a constant speed for more than 10 seconds unless it’s a long uphill. This procedure is a little nauseating, and can be annoying to other drivers – especially when they’re behind you.

Is it time?

Holy Cow.

It’s just about that time.

I started yesterday like this –

And ended the day here

The motor and trans haven’t seen the frame since September or October or something. Been quite a while I say. There was some time between that first and last picture here. I started about 9am and finished up around 6pm. Everything was fairly straight forward. What’s not evident in these pictures is that I took the time to lube all my cables, installed new choke and throttle lowers, regreased my splitter, new front brake cable, and new carb needles. What can account for the rest of the time was having a 12 and 8 year old *helping* my brother and myself out. Fun.

Actually, I don’t think we could’ve installed the motor without them. We placed a car jack (with a piece of wood about where we thought the motor needed to be. My brother and I wrestled the motor onto the jack and found it the operation needed to be moved forward in order to line up the front motor mount. I’m not the strongest nor the weakest guy around, I mean I did carry this motor up and down a flight of stairs by my self just fine – but I couldn’t life the motor inside the frame while squatting, just couldn’t. So while my brother and I lifted the motor my nephew repositioned the jack and my niece helped out by screaming “why does Ricker get to help?!” Couldn’t of done it without them.

2 road blocks were hit yesterday. We broke 1 bell housing stud when installing the trans, 1 removed it self, and 1 stripped. Luckily the hardware store down the street had them and we were back in business shortly there after.

The other road block, which didn’t really stop us, is that I have zero shift return. I want to chalk it up to my shift linkage fix, which was to install a spring pin in place of the clevis. The fit is so tight I think it’s overpowering the return spring. But I could be very wrong. The trans bench shifted and returned just okay when I first tested it, but I figured the o-ring Charlie installed for me was causing a bit of friction and that it would go away after the whole thing was put into operation. I may prove to be wrong and I will probably address this issue before riding her.

Transmission part 2

I felt okay about tackling re-shimming my transmission. A little hesitant, but I figured I couldn’t really get myself into a situation I couldn’t get out of, and figured what the hell. Right?

Really, the only part that needs to be shimmed is the shift drum. You install the drum by itself, stick you finger in through the bell housing side and see if you can wiggle the drum fore and aft. I could. At that point it’s just a matter of installing shims (fancy name for washers with measured thicknesses) until you get rid of the slop. Mine required 1 more .6mm shim. You don’t know where to put it at first, so allsya do is guess and check for the best shift feel. Not rocket science people.

The real bastard of the trans work is getting the shims to stay put while your trying to install the drum. The shims at the top (rear of the trans – I say top because I had the trans vertical this whole time and the back of the trans was facing up) are not a problem. The bottom shims are a huge pain though, since if there off the shaft that runs through the drum won’t find it’s home – it’ll be obstructed. I used grease to hold the shims in place, but even still it took quite a careful hand.

The whole bit needs to be installed in 3rd gear. The nature of the shift drum makes is such that the top dog is in a flat part of it’s travel, so you have a little leeway where it goes. The bottom dog however needs to be in a very particular position. What I did was take a long piece of solder,  wrapped it under the dog and tied the solder around whatever to hold the bottom dog where it needed to be. This helped a lot. It allowed me to be able to slip the bottom dog into the shift drum without having to hold it at the correct height. Then the top dog was slipped into the shift drum, and then the shaft anchored home.

I also had Charlie Mullendore machine my pre-selector shaft to accept an o-ring and installed a beefier 5 speed return spring. New gaskets and seals and of course Greg Stainless’s hardware to finish up the job.

I don’t know if this is true about others, but my workbench seems to be a reflection of my life. The busier I am, the more cluttered the bench gets. It’s probably because I have less time to organize, but I like to think it could be some deeper metaphor.

Enter the transmission

My trans worked fine, as far as I could tell. Some sloppy linkage issues that could be remedied from the outside, but since I still had some time on my hands I decided to give it a once over.

Cover off:

Looks ok to me so far, I guess.

What that cover covers up:

I really have no idea what all these shafts are yet, so before I figure it out I thought I’d better pull everything out of there and mix it around so I’d really have to think about it to get it back together.

I later discovered that I think this is the “clutch shaft” or maybe the “output shaft” or possibly “neither of those.” You’ve figured out I’m figuring this out as I go, right?

What else? Well this one is the shift drum, which is easy enough to spot and name. This picture notes the top of the drum and shows 2 shims that were found on the one end.

Pretty sure this is called something like the input shaft, or cluster thing maybe. This is really the only thing that may fall apart in your hands, really only the gears on the ends of it tend to slide off when you’re not looking so try and look when they fall off so you stand a chance of putting it back together the right way. Also shown is the dogs or sliding muffs.

Really, I did have some motivation to dive into the trans besides boredom. First, I figured on replacing those bearings since they’re about $50 for a round (save the needle bearing, left well enough alone on that one), second I heard the 4th gear bushing was prone to failure. Once again, Charlie called it again :

Charlie M. didn’t have a spare, so after calling around a few places – Mark Etheridge of Moto Guzzi Classics hooked me up with a new 4th gear complete with bushing for $50. Awesome.

So all that’s left is the intermediate shaft. Which is great because it’s all machined together so you can drop it and let it roll off the table and not have to worry about remembering how it went back together. You can also spot a little metal tray towards the top that is supposedly crucial to tranny lubrication.

Oh, but wait!

My intermediate shaft has a huge gnarly crack in it!

I have no idea what caused it, nor can I speculate. I can say for sure that Charlie Mullendore hooked me up with a spare at a very fair price.

I mentioned replacing the bearings, which for the most part is very straight forward. However there is one at the front (engine side) of the trans that requires a modified puller. Behind it is a special place that has a sort of nippleish protrusion that would crumple if a regular style bearing puller were used. The plate is unobtanium, so be careful. Charlie shipped me his modified puller, which is just a run of the mill blind hole collet that he had machined a recess in the center of to clear the nip of the plate.

Let’s see if I can remember how to do this.

I’ve got some catching up to do. I’ve been fiddling, a bit and a bit. Obviously I haven’t been able to find any time to update this old thing, I hope you haven’t lost your cool – I am.

The front main seal is a real bastard I tell you what. It’s the only seal I’ve encountered that is driven in backwards, which is a royal pain. Here’s my first attempt

…pretty, ain’t it? Best part is I didn’t have a spare. Never buggered a seal so bad before. So that pushed me back another week. Que the 2nd seal, which went in a bit better – but wait!

I broke my timing cover! The force of driving the seal from the back, cracked the cover and a small ring started to lift outwards. Another piece for the scrap pile. This might’ve been a month ago by now so I’m not positive, but I’m willing to bet I was pretty pissed. Luckily, once again Charles Mullendore of Antietam Classic Cycle came to the rescue (once again) and mailed me a new timing cover complete with installed front seal. Thanks Charlie!

So now the motor is pretty much complete, though apparently I have zero pictures of it. I’ll try and work on that – most likely I’ll forget though.

making sure it clears!

MOV02087

Originally uploaded by getonyourbikesandride

guzziology stresses making sure everything clears when fitting a non-stock cam. Wanted to not have to cross my fingers when I first fire this thing up, and having nothing better to do while in the depths of an Upstate NY winter – I set on making sure for sure.

I put the motor on it’s side on some 4x4s to protect the nose of the crank. Pulled the pan and had a gander. What I was really looking for is to make sure the cam didn’t run into any of the other reciprocating parts. I set up my camera because I thought it all looked neat, though the cam shaft is not really visible in the footage. Regardless, maybe some of you will enjoy this.

In all honesty, I didn’t like this angle to perform this check. Afterwards, I did pull each cylinder individually to verify the cam was free and clear from all obstructions. It was.

Next was to check the valves had enough clearance between themselves and the piston during their travels. Pull the heads, oil them and the cylinders and stick a wad of children’s modeling clay in the and bolt everything back together. Hand turn the crank a few revolutions and pull the heads again and have a little looksie.

Carefully popped off the clay mass and cut in in half to check the clearances [found in guzziology], all of which were fine. This did give me a nice perspective on the combustion chamber.

Cam Timing

Just about the only bit about motor building that I was apprehensive about is cam timing. So far my duties have been to clean, reinstall and torque things – which is all very basic, and this is coming from a guy who wasn’t raised doing this stuff. But cam timing is pretty damn critical and requires some higher thinking, especially if you’re not using a stock cam. This isn’t to scare anyone, or to make me sound like a genius for figuring it out – in the end I think it took me 4 or 5 days spread out over 2 weeks. Which was good, because after a day or two of screwing around I was able to really sit on the concept and I think that helped me come to a conclusion in the end. And in the end I also realized that this isn’t rocket science either.

The manual is a good place to start with this process, at least that’s where I started. First Is lining up the flywheel to the crank, there is an arrow engraved on the side of the flywheel which needs to be lined up with a specific case nub [about 11 o’clock when facing the rear]. This is the position for left TDC which is the cylinder I focused on to set my cam. So line up the flywheel to the crank and stick your degree wheel on there too, line up 0º with both of these marks.

Degree wheels can be had here for free: http://machinerycleanery.com/DWUniversal.htm
Download, print and glue to a cereal box. DONE.

I used rolled duct tape in several locations to insure the degree wheel wouldn’t slip – this worked very well for me. Next, I used some solder to create pointers to more accurately get a reading. I installed one at 0º TDC. I stuck another one at an arbitrary location, so that at any point I could check that neither of my pointers had slipped.

Took some sharpies and went to work marking up my degree wheel to make things a ton easier on myself.

These marks are for the b10 cam. In case your eye sight is terrible they are:

Intake opens – 29º BTDC
Intake closes – 60º ABDC
Exhaust opens – 58º BBDC
Exhaust closes – 31º ATDC

I set the valve clearance to an arbitrary amount [.032″] and started recording when the exhaust valve was opening and closing, using a piece of cellophane pinched between the rocker and the valve stem. When the valve was opening, I recorded the value exactly when the cellophane was pinched between the rocker and valve stem – when the valve was closing, exactly when the cellophane was freed. Great, well now I had numbers that didn’t match what I was supposed to get, and I really didn’t know where to go.

Eventually, I learned that because there is no spec. valve checking clearance for the b10 it’d be a miracle if your numbers matched up anyhow. So, what you are looking for is opening and closing degrees, that are equally apart from the spec given for the cam. If your valve opens 5º sooner than spec, you want it to close 5º after spec. If it opens 15º before spec, you want it to close 15º after spec. Dig? That took me awhile to figure out. But it’s that easy. The discrepancy between your values and spec are do to what you arbitrarily set your checking clearance at.

——————————————————

So while I had this method going on for the exhaust valve as prescribed in the manual, I tried a different method on the intake valve. Using the lobe center method, gave me another chance to use a dial gauge which I find is one of my favorite tools. Love it.

First, I guess before we play with tools – we should calculate the lobe center of the intake valve, that is the exact point where the lifter is sitting highest in it’s travel on the lobe of the cam – the equivalent of TDC for a camshaft. Here is a website that will do the math for you http://www.rbracing-rsr.com/camshaft.html. And another website where I learned myself on the subject http://www.muzzys.com/articles/lobe_centers.html. This will give you the number to shoot for, for me and my b10 I found the intake LC should occur at 105.5º ATDC.

Now let’s play.

To secure the dial gauge, I just bolted on a piece of steel I had laying around to the head. Fixed the gauge straight on to the pushrod of the intake, and zeroed it when the rod was at the base of it’s travel. With me so far? Now the valves dwell at the top, so you can’t just spin the cam until your dial gauge reads it’s highest value and declare that your LC, since it will sit at the highest value for a few degrees. So it’s necessary to take a reading X” before the top, and X” after the top and average the two. For example, if your highest reading on your gauge is .283″ – record the degree when .183″ occurs on the opening ramp, and when .183″ occurs on the closing ramp and average the two readings to find the true LC.

My first attempt, I found my LC to be occurring at 111.5º ATDC. I grew to really like this method because it was easier for me to see the difference between my values and spec and formulate a conclusion. In this case, my experimental value of my intake LC of 111.5º is obviously 6º retarded from the 105.5º calculated earlier. So i knew I had to rotate my cam 6º in relation to the crank. Dig?

Maybe perfection is possible, I was able to have my intake LC occur at 106º ATDC, .5º off from spec.

*Special thanks to Greg Bender and Dick and Bobdar from the wildguzzi forum. Couldn’t have done it without you!

enjoy this.

Assemblage !

getting serious.

First thing after getting the rear main seal installed is to secure the crank and the rear main bearing in the block. The manual shows this being done with the block upright, but I figured it would be a lot easier to do with the block on its side – timing side facing down. This way the crank could be dropped in and the rear main bearing pushed down into place. I propped up the block on some 4×4’s to accommodate the timing side of the crank which protrudes quite a bit from the case. It worked very well.

After the crank and rear main bearing were installed [with plenty of assembly lube!] I put it back on the bench which I lined with parchment paper – I’m trying hard not to let crap get into this motor!

From this angle it was a snap to install and torque down the rods. If you haven’t read the manual regarding which direction the rods should go – don’t bother, it confused me to pieces.  Guzziology explains it much better – face the flats and the oil ways towards the right hand cylinder. Done. New lockplates, plenty of assembly lube and I’m there.

The oil pump and oil pick up screen were installed at the same time – the share 2 bolts and I like to torque things down evenly, so that’s what I did. I’m really not following the manual for any sort of sequence, just doing what seems most logical. After that was taken care of, the oil pressure relief valve was secured.

And what do you know? That’s it for the bottom end. I put the sump on next so I could stand it upright.

So. Looks like at this point I put the oil pump gear on. I put zip ties through the small end of the rods so they wouldn’t bang around – I don’t remember where I saw this, but its a damn smart idea.

Bell housing side. I JB welded the cam plug. The oil lines are back. It was recomended to be this morning that a little anti-seize on the threads of the banjo bolt and a little yamabond on the sealing washers is a good idea to really seal the deal. Got to remember to do that.

Spent this morning cleaning bell housing stuff. The only thing that was really notable was the flywheel and the amount of accumulated junk in the depths of the teeth. Its hard to see at first, and I didn’t even notice it. I gave the whole bit a dose of WD-40 and went at it with a stiff wire brush, but even after that I then noticed the junk in the teeth. So I set off with a dental pick and cleaned each cavity.

Distributor

I set on rebuilding my distributor.

It worked, I never had much problems with it after I put new clamps on it [for the cap]. But, it’s winter and you’ve got to keep busy to keep from going crazy. Its a rather straight forward affair, but I decided to take a load of pictures since I could find anyone who documented this procedure before.

The gear looked pretty sad.

Probably another result of my low oil pressure.

The first step into taking the distributor apart is to get this gear off – which really was the trickiest part of the whole operation. I followed Charles Mullendore’s technique found at Greg Bender’s magnificent site . I did not however make a support like the one shown on Greg’s site. It went ok without one.

The only thing holding the gear to the shaft is a peened rod. The first step is to grind a flat spot [cheap rotary tool] and center punch it.

Then you need to drill off the head of the remaining exposed rod, and use an 1/8″ punch to drive it out

There are 2 washers under the drive gear

And then the lower body can be removed by sliding it downwards. It’s on there pretty good, I had to coax mine back and forth a hair.

I had already removed the cap, rotor, points, clamps and condenser.

Looking down into the points cavity – There’s a bit of felt there in the end of the cam. I really had no idea what it was for, I thought it was for electrical insulation or something. Apparently it’s meant to keep the advance mechanism lubricated and that the felt should always be kept moist with oil. Who knew?

The points [backer] plate was something I wasn’t sure how to remove. I couldn’t be sure that it wasn’t welded into place. Charles came to the rescue and told me his method which was to take a pair of needle nose pliers and stick each nose into 1 of 2 triangular openings in the plate and twist and pull. Worked very well.

With this out the shaft and advance unit will fall right out.

and then there is nothing left inside the distributor housing – except some junk that needs to be cleaned out.

The whole advance mechanism is super straight forward. Once you pop off the springs, you can grab the cam and pull upwards to remove it from the bottom half. BE CAREFUL. Do it over a baking pan, or in a box – something that will catch the super little ball bearing that’s in there.

Don’t forget there is a tiny spring in there too [besides the 2 advance springs]. I spent awhile looking on my hands and knees for it, when I realized it never left its house in a hole in the shaft.

The ball bearing sits right in that hole on top of the spring.

At this point the bob weights will pull right off too. I gave them a good cleaning since they were covered in the same junk as the rest of the inside of the distributor.

I guess this is the last picture I took before reassembly, which was not documented. Very straight forward.

One thing I will add is that I was told with modern gas it’s better to have 2 short advance springs opposed to the 1 short 1 long stock set up. Having 2 shorties slows the advance rate and helps prevent ‘pinging’ I had already had in my possession a new set, but since my old shorty wasn’t stretched [when compared to the new one] I installed the old shorty with the new shorty.