Its certainly been a while since I've updated. A combination of a good business and Bradykinesia connected with my Parkinson's ("Bradykinesia is defined by slow movement and an impaired ability to move the body swiftly on command. It's most commonly a symptom of Parkinson's disease...) tends to eat up all my time. Along with about 6 hours a week of physical therapy... well that's my pity party for today.
We got the top end of the engine off. There is no indication of valve/piston contact, blown gaskets, broken rings, nothing. On picture will show how the #1 piston stands proud of the cylinder by about 5thou (thickness of the machinists scale in the pic.)
I love how the top end looks, The titanium bits have a different patina, the OS cyl head nuts (13mm hex) and the trick cam chain tensioner. And the Arias pistons look mean. It came apart very uniformly, all the cam bolts were uniformly tight, cyl nuts also. It started at a tap of the button and pumped 210psi on all 4.
Anyway, the floor is now open for discussion. Remember the problem is: After running it real hard at the drags, about 12 times, and one run for LSR in Wilmington OH, (a disappointing 125mph at WOT) we parked it and disassembled the bottom end. It was seeping from everywhere, which would manifest itself in a drip here and there. But I wanted it to be dry. I think we accomplished that, got it back together, using a new 4-2 pipe from CycleX. I wanted to dyno it again for the pipe. Took it to the local Ducati shop, finally found a decent shop, and they are only about 6 miles away. It never sounded good to me, like it was running on 3 cylinders. I went over the tune and took the carbs apart. That seemed to help. But the Dyno run was pathetic, like 49hp! Prior runs were north of 80 IIRC, which was still lower than expectations, but the pipe and cam were holding it back I think.
So, new compression test put #1 at about 80psi, #2 about 120, and 3 and 4 were OK at 210. I'm working from memory on 1 & 2 , lets just say they were pitiful. Bot a leakdown tester and all4 were the Same! less than 5% IIRC. Maybe something happened at the LSR run?
So here we are. I want to change back to conventional gaskets. I'm not thrilled with the MLS, they seeped oil at the base gasket and head gasket, uniformly coating the respective top fins. It would have been enough to drip if run long enough.
2 or 3 base gaskets may buy some height on the cyl block. Or maybe the piston needs to be checked for its squish area which I think was put on later, can't remember. Oh yeah, I'll want to put a big dog cam in it when finally back together, since I won't be touring on it. Any suggestions. CycleX seems to have a good selection. After all this, I won't settle for less than 90.
At least we got one thing fixed. The throttle would snap back, but I could tell it was hung up on something. We tried the routing, etc. nothing worked. Took the throttle pipe out and realized that it was rubbing the wheel in against the inside of the quick throttle body. So about 5 minutes of rubbing it on sandpaper took about 20thou off of it. Now it snaps back with vigor. Don't ever let your controls work improperly.
So that's it for now. I'll probably be throwing in pics and comments way out of chronologicla order, but we'll sort through them!
Thx!
PS: We chucked the head up in the vice and poured solvent in each port. No leakage.
