Man, it's been a long time since I was here last. I had to go back seven pages to find this thread. Just shows how industrious the folks who use this site are - by comparison, the UK board has hardly moved . . .
And so to business. After what seems like an eternity, the engine is home again. The boys at the garage came up trumps and have done more work on it than anyone thought was going to be necessary. Not only have they replaced the bearing journals (hooray - the crank moves nice and freely), but they did some checking and measuring while they were in there. Almost everything is within tolerance, with the exception of one of gear selector forks, but they tell me it's not significant and won't be noticeable - good job too, 'cos they're now obsolete. Even better, they found and repaired some stripped threads, which came as something of a surprise. In putting it all back together, they stuck a new top-end gasket set on and torqued everything up/down.
The downsides? Well, there are two - scuffed paintwork on the casings, and the cost. As far as the paint is concerned, it was only stuff I'd sprayed on myself, and since the engine hasn't been run yet, it hadn't cured. I've since bought some brush-on VHT stuff, so I'll put that on and stick it in front of a heater. It's nice enough, but I've still not found a finish I really like - or that seems as durable as that from the factory. All of the paints I've tried so far seem to be only a few microns thick when applied, unlike the factory stuff which looks more like powdercoat. Ah well . . .
And then there's the cost. When I asked the shop a week or so ago, they said they couldn't give me an accurate estimate 'cos they hadn't kept a proper record of the amount of hours that had gone into the engine - but they did mention something like 15 (yes, fifteen) man hours. I have to admit to struggling not to go berserk at that point - it didn't take me that long to pull the thing apart and rebuild it when the cases came back from being dipped. And considering that labour alone is around £50 p/h, I could see a staggering bill coming my way. But I kept my temper - and good job too. As I've said before, they're good guys and so I was very pleasantly surprised to get a bill for a total of half the previous guestimate when I picked the engine up late this afternoon. Now I admit that still doesn't sound cheap, until you consider that it included the cost of all the labour, an entire new set of journals, plus a new gasket set, plus a bunch of little bits, plus taxes. That's gotta be a bargain in anyone's book - and given that I'd budgeted more than I paid (and knowing that they must've undercharged me) I gave them a good few quid towards their Christmas party. It's not that I've got money to burn, but little things like that can go a long way - and you never know when you'll need to call in a favour.
And since my last visit I've rebuilt the wheels, which turned out to be a whole lot more straightforward than I'd thought it would. With the help of lots of research and reading materials, together with a guide I found on YouTube, I made a half decent job even if I do say so myself. In the end I bottled out of trying to get the tyres off/on again myself and took the wheels to a local tyre dealer. Turns out one of the guys there runs old bikes (he's got a Greeves amongst other things) and when I took the rebuilt wheels back in, he asked me where I'd got them done 'cos he was so impressed with the results. Funny to see the look on his face when I told him that it was all my own work.
That's all for now. As I said, the new engine paint is drying/curing and then it should (he says) just be a case of putting the jigsaw back together. Photos to follow.
Thanks for sticking it out . . .
Neil