Sunday worship

The day started out with a long overdue brake job.

New shoes had it grabbing a lot sooner than before and a lot better, should have done this a long time ago.

This was the first chance I had to test out the new brace and I must say it made a good bit of difference. As already stated it overall just made the ride a lot more predictable and pleasant.

On the way up to Denton:

 

Classic Denton haunt:

Quite a few people showed up for the original gathering, but by the time I had gotten my bike back buttoned up and ready to go most were ready to head home. It was just the three of us heading up to Denton (and two more in the truck)

Loudbike, Eddies 750, and Matts Harley:

Brace Yourself

   Everyone's been telling me since I pulled the front fender off Loudbike that I need a fork brace (and they were right, but I'll get to that later) The night before a bunch of us were to meet up for a wrench and a ride I decided to go ahead and get it done.

   I thought at first that I could make it really simply flat across the top, but after trying a few times in Pro-E I just wasn't liking the look of it so I had to bite the bullet and make it a three sided part (cut the bottom, flip, cut the side, flip, and cut the bolt holes) Fortunately I have a bunch of 6061-T6 aluminum to use for just such a project, and free is the only price I can afford at the moment.

   This is the second side running. It took me about 5 hours to get to this point (Originally I thought the whole thing might eat up 4 hours, but mucking about with the design slowed me down a lot)

   An hour and a half later (1:30 in the morning) I've got my finished part. I've just got to cross my fingers and hope that it fits.

   Bam! I can't deny the difference it made, the front end feels a lot more solid and it's not nearly as fatiguing as it used to be. 

Two steps back

Like my new headlight?

...Kidding, I bought it from a scooter store from a Sachs MadAss. It will be tucked behind a fairing on SixtyNine. It's the smallest I could find.

Didn't get a whole lot done last night, but what I did discover is worth mentioning

The thing was oil starved when it melted down. The 360 is apparently fairly infamous for this issue so I'm going to do what I can to try and alleviate it.

When they designed this motor they at one point were planning on oiling that center journal. As you can see in this picture there's a passageway cast into the head itself for this purpose:

Now I've just got to do the same thing to the good one.

Headache

Didn't get a ton done last night, but I am moving in the right direction. The tv in the garage hinders my productivity.

Stamped to identify the proper parts.

New seals 

I like to pre-oil everything before installing  

new seals in place

Installing the valve springs. A little assembly lube on everything that has metal to metal contact isn't a bad idea, and it helps hold the little retainers in place. They're still a hell of a pain to place though. Also note back on the table that the tighter coil of the springs are at the bottom, remember this when installing them.

Old head on the right, it's interesting how much the casting has changed I don't know the build year for either but I would guess that the one on the left is newer. They're both from the same model of bike.

And this is why the old head's being replaced

 new head:

New on the left. By the way when I say new I don't actually mean new, it's off the motor for one of my other bikes and almost as old but it's "new" to Loudbike. 

Again, I've stayed up too late, and this is where I end.

The past

This is all kinds of out of order, but I have faith that you can handle it. We were going to make this whole thing into kind of a time lapse deal... but for one reason or another that never happened. So I'm going to go ahead and throw a couple of the teardown shots up as they are.

Loudbike's broken. That's why several of the last posts have dealt with the rebuilding of her head. Some friends stopped by a few Saturdays ago to help me break her down so that we could try and find what all the trouble was about, and I think we did.

 Once we had the head off the bike we could tell that the cam chain was binding up, and was visibly stretched, so it needed to be replaced. Chris just happened to have one that he had mistakenly bought off eBay so we were good to go. Only problem is that to replace the cam chain you have to completely take the motor apart... and I mean completely.

 

 Also this is a tappet adjuster set screw... it had come loose and was bouncing around in the bottom of the cam chain chamber. This is what had caused the binding of the chain. I'm still not sure if it was the root of my problems though.

The half way point

Back together, sort of. The head is shot which you'll see soon enough, so I had to take one off another motor and swap it in which so far has taken a couple of weeks.

Lapping it up

This is after a real good cleaning. This head is from a motor that wasn't supposed to go on this bike, so I had been doing a bunch of cosmetic work to it which left it full of metal. Lots of carb cleaner, brake cleaner, WD40 and a full disassembly (minus the valve guides) later and I've got this:

 Not nearly 100 percent, but it's better than it was and for this bike I wasn't planning on modding the motor all out like my other bike. Also with gas at $3.29 and a full size van to drive I want this thing back on the road now.

Before and after (intake)

After cleaning each valve I lapped them all in by hand, I'll have to get one of those little suction cup sticks for the next job... but how will I hang it on the wall?! The intake seat pictured is not in good shape, you can see the pitting that could lead to loss of compression, I'll have to remember this when she's running so I can test it.

 ... and exhaust. This took a while with them chucked lightly into a cordless drill and a couple different grits of Scothbrite.

When I got done with this I was shocked to discover that it was almost midnight so I had to call it a day. With a little luck by the weekend (two days) I'll be able to test ride.