The ‘79 California Rebuild Thread

[Nin]

Agreed, it’s odd. The exhaust ports and seats were very fouled with up to 1-2 mm of carbon scale, including onto the exhaust valve seats. But once cleaned off (3 hours in the ultrasound cleaner) the seats look in really good condition.

It’s clear that the heads have been off before.

So given good valve seats I’m confident that new valves will do the biz.

Springs are in spec, but there’s one shim missing off the bottom of one of them. PO clearly dropped it somewhere!


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[Nin]

A quick lunchtime break gave me the opportunity to look a bit more closely. This is one of the exhaust valve seats after cleaning.



This Is after a very gentle 30 second lap with fine paste

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[Nin]

And the postie brought some goodies, including the new ignition switch.




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[Nin]

A constant stream of deliveries today. I think Mrs Nin is beginning to suspect something is afoot...

But nothing says I love you better than a big box of stainless steel bolts eh?

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[walkingpictures]

Love stainless bolts,put a lot on my Le Mans Mark V when I had it many years ago.

Mrs Nin will get suspicious when she checks her bank account................

Great thread,loving it.

Kimbo

 

[ChasF]

Agreed, it’s odd. The exhaust ports and seats were very fouled with up to 1-2 mm of carbon scale, including onto the exhaust valve seats. But once cleaned off (3 hours in the ultrasound cleaner) the seats look in really good condition.

It’s clear that the heads have been off before.

So given good valve seats I’m confident that new valves will do the biz.

Springs are in spec, but there’s one shim missing off the bottom of one of them. PO clearly dropped it somewhere!


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Suggests to me that the valve clearances were too tight although doesn’t really explain why the seats are in such good nick.

There’s always a temptation to set the clearances tight in an attempt to reduce the clatter.

 

[Nin]

Parts cleaning day today - I won’t bore you with the detail but here’s the gearbox innards all sparkly clean and bathing in some nice oil.

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[Nin]

Right let’s have a look at this puppy.

Surely nothing to trouble the scorers in this one. Er, hang on, feck.

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[Nin]

Luckily, in the parts box, there’s this

This bit looks ok



This bit doesn’t

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[Nin]

What do you reckon? Rebuild it with some nice new bearings (and grease the splines, obvs) and see how we go?


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[Aidan1150]

What do you reckon? Rebuild it with some nice new bearings (and grease the splines, obvs) and see how we go?

That's how I would go Nin, but then I'm not an expert, more a garden shed type engineer if you will.

 

[mikeyboy]

The pitting on the pinion is not nice.
I think you have to ask yourself,what use is the bike likely to get?
If you were heading off on a RTW jolly,I think you would want better.
If it’s Sunday’s and bike nights,the worst that can happen is a ride home on a breakdown truck.

 

[Nin]

The pitting on the pinion is not nice.
I think you have to ask yourself,what use is the bike likely to get?
If you were heading off on a RTW jolly,I think you would want better.
If it’s Sunday’s and bike nights,the worst that can happen is a ride home on a breakdown truck.

Yeah unfortunately its worse than it looks. The pitting is up to 1.5 mm deep in places. Hey ho.

 

[Nin]

So FD decision time. What I know is:
- It’s all in bits already,
- the seals won’t have seen oil in over a decade so are of dubious elasticity,
- the drive flange needs to be swapped out and
- it’ll all need to be re-shimmed in any case
- I don’t need it for a few months yet
- It’ll bother me if its not done right.

On the down side, we’re looking at around £450 for parts and it’s not something I’ve done before so will need some help.

I’ve asked Baldrick (the one and only) and Mikeyboy for a bit of advice on this one.

I don’t suppose any of you out there have a nice shiny 7/33 FD sitting on a shelf waiting for me?


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[ChasF]

It’ll bother me if its not done right.

I think you’ve answered you own question

 

[Nin]

I think you’re probably right Chas. I’ll need to sell one of my kidneys first though.


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[Shurv]

Great thread, it is reminding me of my 1986 GS rebuild into a Moorespeed special. Everytime I dropped something off to Richie Moore to inspect and replace bearings and seals etc, I'd get a call back with the immortal words , "It's fecked", "worst final drive I've ever seen", I ended up replacing pretty much everything. The only original bits left were the frame, rear subframe,rear hub,final drive casing, gearbox needed 3 new gears, crankshaft, con rods,engine casings and ignition barrel and key. Everything else was scrap or replaced for Moorespeed parts. It got to the stage where I'd sunk so much cash into it and replaced so much more than originally budgeted for, that I felt forced to finish the project to a much higher standard that planned.
Deliveries of shiny new parts and bags of lovely stainless fastners was like christmas. Projects like this are all high's and lows, the lows are when you find something major you hoped was servicable, turns out to be fubar , the highs are when it starts to come together and you are totally proud of your own efforts.Great project Nin, really enjoying it.

 

[Nin]

Cheers Shurv - sounds a bit like Trigger’s broom!

To be fair this is the second bit that offers me no choice. The first was the barrels. The rest (Wheels, chrome, silencers) are all a choice to upgrade. I kind of knew this was going to happen anyway!

Still, it’ll be great when it’s done, and I know it will be sound which is the main thing.




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[cookie]

If it's any help...

When I was getting towards the end of my own Loopframe build, I checked out the final drive , and found it in very similar condition to yours. By that time, I had spent such a massive amount of cash on the bike, including a new drive hub, I thought I'd just bung it back on and change it later. It worked fine for the few thousand miles I owned it, and I never got around to changing it.

 

[Nin]

Monday update - I managed at last to get some time to dig the wheels out of the loft. I only really checked the front when they were delivered. As you can see it’s ok, but does need a bit of a tidy up.



But checking the rear, I was in for a pleasant surprise. It’s clearly been cared for in the past, and has taken on the lovely alloy patina. I think I’ll leave this one as is.

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