'72 going back together

Excellent tread, this is what the forum is about...thanks.

I got the engine in and it started with my little remote tank. It ran smooth and I went straight to 2000 rpm for about 3 min.











Oil pressure was 60 psi the whole time so I am happy about that. The poor thing has languished since Barber so I was glad that everything is still working.
Dan.

I had to come apart with the motor (see "Soft Seize") so I thought I would show how the little "cotton thread trick" worked. There is actually an indentation where the thread was!



What the bike looked like going to Florida to give my dad a ride on it.



And, yes, I now have a dent in my front fender from the oil pressure gauge fitting.

Dan.

Bike looks great, love your trailer rig too :mrgreen:

It looks so nice and refreshed.
Hey, where's the Norton logo on your timing cover?

Roadrash said:

It looks so nice and refreshed.
Hey, where's the Norton logo on your timing cover?

Click to expand...

That's an old cover chopped to tighten cam nut and oil pump worm drive.

J

So, I advanced the timing and forgot about it and then did about 2000 miles (in that big rainstorm last year) and ruined my perfectly good .020 pistons. Now I have decided to put in a new cam from Comstock Engineering which is the Webcam 312a. Jim recommends this one for a combat engine to beef up the torque. I want to run a 22T front sprocket so I asked him for his opinion. I also have Jim Comstock's conical valve springs with the little Ti retainers. (I was thinking of changing these without removing the head or the engine from the bike but now I am really glad I didn't do it.) Here are some pictures of the springs and the locator/shims I made for them. The shims do two things: Center the springs around the valve stem, shim the correct spring length. The springs cam with shims that also located the spring but my bike has pretty large valve guides and the locator got pretty thin by the time I got it ground out to go over the stem. I also did not like the idea of a shim stack since I felt like the locator wouldn't have much meat to hold on to once it got shimmed up as far as it needed to be. So, as you can see, my little one-piece spring locator/shims do the whole job all in one go.










You might notice that the exhaust shims are quite thick. The only explanation I can come up with is that it is a combat head. (Yes, they get the fiber washer under them.) Any way, each shim is the correct thickness to shim the spring to 1.340" which is what Jim recommends for a street motor. More pics of the new cam and pistons to come.

I just got all my parts back from H. M. Eliot here in North Carolina.
Here is the Juicy little list:
1. Pistons coated on the skirt with special friction reducing coating.
2. Piston tops, head including exhaust ports, valve bottoms all ceramic coated.
3. Wrist pins done in DLC coating
4. Rocker arm shafts done in DLC coating. (I couldn't resist)
5. Rod bearings coated with friction reducing coating which also makes them .0005 thicker. (Should tighten the clearance right back down to minimum standard.)
6. New Web-Cam from Jim
7. 4" radius-ed lifters to go with the cam. (also from Jim.)
I promise to post photos by this coming Wednesday.

The nice goodies,

Great deal from RGM with the British Pound a little down to the dollar right now.



A little extra thickness on the head gasket to adjust the compression of the Combat head.

Wow That is some gorgeous bits and pieces there. 8) Thanks for posting.

I'm going back together with the crankshaft today. I had wanted the CNW-ARP Crank Bolt Kit but it has not been released by Matt and the gang at CNW yet. (Is it possible that I would do a complete tear down just to change the bolts in my crank at some future point??)