I headed off up the garage straight after work, workshop manual in one hand, a bottle of
pop in the other prepared for a serious nights engine stripping. The cam cover was already
off and so the next step was to remove the top end. The camchain tensioner was removed
and the next thing was the top camchain runner........ah, as soon as I put the allen key into
the first socket head I knew.....whoever had been here before has knackered the heads :o(
what a start to the night. With a bit of luck one of the long outer bolts came out, but the
other three were not going to be so easy.
Fortunately at this point my old mate Richard turned
up (He's a fitter at Dunlop Aerospace, so is a very handy person to know when things like this
happen). We tried butchering a screwdriver and making a slot in the heads but that didn't work.
Then I noticed that my impact driver had one of those stupid TORX type adaptors and this could
be forced into the cap head then given a crack with the impact driver. It worked, all three
came out, it took a lot of effort but we did it eventually. A simple 5 minute job had taken close on an hour.
The cams came out, and the followers underneath looked good, even the one under the knackered
cam lobe. The head bolts were then undone, (after the three M10 bolts were taken out) and the
head, barrels and pistons removed. The bores seem fine, there's no piston slop or scoring, infact
the machining marks are still just visible.
We then moved on to the clutch, the casing was a pig to get off, we ended up having to insert a
thin screwdriver between the two faces at one of the bolt bosses. Once the seal was broken the
cover came off really easy. The clutch plates look fine, I originally had replacing the clutch plates
in my initial budget but from the look of the plates I don't need to. I'll do some measuring at
a later date.
Once the clutch plates were out it was time to hit the other side of the engine, the sprocket
shaft cover had to come off........ahhhh, bugger.........when I took the engine out I didn't
take the sprocket off, now it needs to come off to get the cover off, and we can't stop the
clutch center spinning. It's now time to get a clutch plate on the scanner, trace round it
and get my good mate here at work that operates our laser cutter to make me a tool.
We decided to finish at this point, it was 10pm, Richard's dinner was still in his microwave at home,
my sarines for work needed making, and I hadn't eaten anything since midday!
While we were clearing up, we turned over the cylinder head and this is what we found.
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Only the inlet valves in cylinder number 4 look to be perfectly OK, cylinders 2 & 3 are sinking
but the one nearest the camera is sitting about 3mm below the face of the seat. If this has
gone so far that it's damaged the cylinder head we'll all find out when I borrow a valve spring
compressor.........
I couldn't help myself last night, I just had to go and do something, it wasn't planned at all
but I suddenly found myself with a spare hour, so off up the garage I went.
As I hadn't got long I decided to do a bit of checking, first was the camchain, a 161.8mm
service limit and mine measured 160mm, that's about 40 quid off the total bill. :o)
Next were the clutch springs, only about a tenner to replace, but hey, that's about half the
cost of an inlet valve. 33 - 34.2mm standard with a limit of 32.6mm, and mine ranged from
33.3 to 33.5mm, excellent! :o)
This was getting scarey, after the experience of last couple of days, something expensive
was bound to need replacing
So to the clutch friction plates, about 30 quid for a set, standard at 2.9 - 3.1mm, with a
service limit of 2.75mm. My set came in at between 2.95 and 3.05mm, well within service limit. :o)
At this point I decided to give up while I was ahead! No point pushing my luck! I slept well
last night knowing that the bill had come down by close on 80 quid.
The plan was to spend the whole evening in the garage, and maybe get a dial a pizza delivered
so I hadn't got to worry about eating. Unfortunately due to the fact that British Telecom couldn't
organise a piss up in a brewery I didn't get home from work till 8.30 and I'd had such a crappy
day I went straight up the pub for a few beers. I'm going to have a go at the bike tonight...
