Work on the motor begins

At last I've started work on Abigails motor. Whilst it was whole I de-greased it, paint stripped it and washed it off. this was followed by vigorously wire brushing the inner casings. I've decided to keep the inner casings as bare aluminium whilst polishing the outer ones. The barrel will be high gloss black and I'll figure out what to do with the head and rocker cover later.

First part of the strip down was to remove the head and barrel. Three bolts in the rocker cover sheared off with no hint of resistance as soon as a socket was applied. Too be honest I wasn't shocked and my local engineer will be called upon to extract the stumps along with the three already sheared exhaust studs. The first glance inside wasn't too depressing. The cam followers looked fine and their is only very slight pitting on the lobes. I've yet to get the callipers out, but I'm optimistic. No other bolts put up a serious fight and soon enough the head and barrel were off. Again, only slight wear is evident in the bore and it's not bad enough to catch your finger nail. Like the cam, I've yet to measure things accurately, but am reasonably pleased so far (I mean, there could have been all manner of scares in there). The inside of the head is sootier than I would have liked with a thick carbon lining and I haven't ripped the valves out yet to check them for damage either.

As you can see, I've placed masking tape over the crank mouth as a precaution against foriegn bodies falling in. I don't intend to split the crank as I know the motor and know there was nothing wrong in there. This bike will not be living a hard life once I've finished it so there is no point in costly work for the sake of it.

Next it's time to rip off the outer casings, starting with the clutch side. Easy work with no grumbles from any bolts. I'll check over the clutch basket and plates just to be sure, but like I say, I know the motor and she never displayed any clutch problems in the 60,000 miles I had her.

And finally off comes the rotor side casing. Just like the clutch side. No struggles here either.

The plan now is to put it all back together. I'm going to start with the outer casings, mainly because it's the cheapest bit. I will be putting the top end together as I can afford it and will be sorting it out one stage at a time. So here's a picture of the outer casings currently. The next entry [hopefully] will see them begin to sparkle.

Just a foot note to that last part. I want these casings to shine, but I don't want to polish out any of the character this engine gained in its faithful service so far. This bike must look like it was born in the 60's, which was a long time ago, and so you'd expect a few 'laughter lines'.