Tearing down a VR880 top end.

Hey everyone!

I've been a long time lurker on this great forum and think it's time to start contributing some content.

My name is Steve Adkins and I have a shop called Preservation Cycle, where I primarily focus on Nortons.

I worked for many years at Big D Cycle in Dallas Tx. as the Norton specialist, and have finally decided to get my own shop going.

During my time at Big D I had the great opportunity to help with lots of great projects, including the restoration of the original Sam Wheeler Norton streamliner, for which I built the motor and transmission, and with the restoration of the Dennis Manning double enginestreamliner, which I built the engines for. We also got to help with the sale and delivery of the HogSlayer to the National Motorcycle Museum in Birmingham England. Around the same time we restored the original Texas Cigar Triumph streamliner which was almost destroyed in the fire the had in 2004. I also had the opportunity to build an SCTA Production Pushrod 750 record holding Commando, which we set the current speed record at Bonneville with. Anyway, enough about my background...

A good customer of mine has a very nice Kenny Dreer VR880 set up in Interstate touring trim. The odometer on the electronic VDO speedo shows over 80,000 miles! I think this is accurate. The bike runs well, but is smoking and leaking badly from the head gasket, as we discovered on a recent trip down the west coast. Time to see what it looks like inside!



Here is the beast in question stripped of its carbs (MKII Amals),exhaust,tank,seat and sidepanels. I should have gotten a shot of it complete, but didn't think of it at the time..I'll post some when it's all done.



Removing the exhaust revealed a badly galled drive side exhaust port thread.


Here is the pipe in question with a bizarre assortment of gaskets and spacers..


Running a thread chaser through the port carefully cleans up the threads..If you look carefully you can see where
the port has had an insert installed to repair previous damage.


Timing side comes out clean and looks good..


Thats as far as I've gotten today, so I will update this once I make some real progress..


Here are a few shots of the brakes and hubs, unique for the VR880. These are actually the second set of rotors. We had a new set made by Kosman when he originally bought the bike, because the first set were so worn that the rear floating rotor actually floated right of its hub! We found that Kosman was the original fabricator of the brakes and had them make some new ones...




Front brake still rusty from the salt air on the Pacific Coast Hwy..






I'll post some more soon..

Hi Steve,

thanks for starting this post. It will be interesting to see more details of how Kenny built the bikes back when they were more of a resto-mod, before he moved on to doing a total re-design.

Ken

The read disc slots look to deep?

I love the last photo.... " re, Made in America" .......... well done who ever thought of that ..... Good luck with your new venture ...

Thanks for posting and best of luck with your new business venture.

Time for an update..

Here are a few more pictures of the bike showing some of the chassis modifications..

A third isolastic mount was added under the motor and transmission..


You can see the bolt added across the cradle and the isolastic between the engine mounting plates..

A cross brace was also added between the front down tubes..



Bike also has some super loud horns!



Dual output coil for the Boyer..



Electronic speedo and adjustable front forks..


Nice stainless steel chainguard and progressive suspension shocks..


Allen bolts on the head..


American 7/16" acorn nuts used on exhaust valve covers and rocker spindle covers..




12 point american 1/2" nuts on the cylinder base studs.


Here you can see where the tach drive has been capped off.
Notice the big step between the case halves. Vintage Rebuilds made their own drive side case half which was
beefed up considerably. The other side is a 750 case without the blanked off hole for the aborted e-start.



Another shot showing the special case half.. You can also see the PCV valve in the engine breather line.



Does anyone know who Baisley is? he stamped his name on top of this cylinder head....



Allen head valve adjusters with mushroom heads.




Intake manifold. Ported but definitely not polished..


Same with the intake tract in the head..


Special rocker spindle covers..



Cylinder head..Plenty of carbon buildup here..


Piston tops...Lots of build up on the timing side..Definitely needs a good clean..



Piston skirts..Not terrible but some wear..


Well there's the problem...The timing side exhaust lobe has gone bad...





Of course the follower is shot. Someone has replaced this one at some point as it doesn't have a chamfer...
Notice the steel cylinder base compression plate...




Well thats it for now...Time to find a camshaft and some followers...

great update :mrgreen:

Wow, that cam lobe looks like it sat in a salty crocodiles mouth for a meal or two!

PreservationCycle said:

Does anyone know who Baisley is? he stamped his name on top of this cylinder head....

Click to expand...

Well known cylinder head specialist in Portland, OR. Kenny used him for pretty much all his cylinder head work, including help in designing the new heads for the later design.

http://www.baisley.com/

Ken

Well, just got off the phone with MegaCycle cams. Lisa was really helpful, and said that Kenny Dreer had a special profile they did for him for these bikes.

They think they might be able to repair the damage to the cam, but it might not be worth it considering the miles it has on it (over 80,000!). So were boxing camshaft and followers and they're off to Mega Cycle in California.


After taking the belt drive primary off it was evident the engine pulley was loose on the shaft and had been rubbing the crankcase. You can see where one of the screws holding the seal retainer was completely worn through!


Here's how it looked after a bit of cleaning..


That one screw hole is ruined. Time for a helicoil/neatsert, if there is enough left to cut a thread..

Can someone explain to me the cam lobe image? The brass/bronze part up close the the cam? The pile of brass shavings on the case? The case with die grinder marks under the shavings?

concours said:

Can someone explain to me the cam lobe image? The brass/bronze part up close the the cam? The pile of brass shavings on the case? The case with die grinder marks under the shavings?

Click to expand...

I suspect what looks like brass shavings is actually just a trick of the flash camera on some oil residue / reflections.

That's just reflections from the overhead lights. The bit that looks like it's made of brass is just old sealing compound on the case. The case had been ground on a bit. The drive side case was a special casting for the VR880 and there was some hand finishing evident..

This is the only VR880 I've heard of that has done big mileage. When I got mine early last year it had done less than 2,000 in 13 years, I've put another 3,000 on it, would have been more but had a number of issues mostly related to it having stood idle for so long. The ones that have come up for sale recently are all low mileage machines too and I was thinking that maybe they were overtuned to the detriment of reliability even though this was the antithesis of what was intended when they were built. Keep up with the post, I'm very interested in what I might expect if I continue riding mine.