Thank you Paul - the folks over at Dan Hall's have been knowledgeable and super nice. To take a small rant, part of the reason I don't like work I can't do myself is I don't even know the details or appreciate what I paid for. I think anyone who is into hobbies like building these old bikes, or cars, or whatever, is bound to be the kind of person who likes to do things themselves, and that part of that is knowing how all this complex #$%* we otherwise take for granted works, at least for me. Quoth Jefferson: "Never trouble another for what you can do for yourself." Then again, I don't have a machine shop, and Jefferson did own slaves. Either way, I'm stoked to have a straight, clean head to build off of. Thinking about it now, it's going to be incredibly satisfying to finish assembling this thing and fire it up.
So now DSS has .25 piston kits for 56$/piston.. those four little pistons would be the most expensive part of building the bike... hell, would cost more than the bike did. So if the shop thinks I can get away with just .25 bored, I may take that route. I pm'd Soos. I'll read up on having pistons cut down.. i.e. what pistons can I start with, what do I do for rings, etc. There seems to be no shortage of 750 pistons on ebay for a pittance. That route just sounds much more fun than buying stuff off the shelf and having it shipped from England, especially if it's less expensive. It seems like NOS pistons come and go from DSS pretty regularly so I guess I don't have to rush that part.
Started pulling the bottom half apart last night. A few of the case bolts made a bizarre air-sucking sound when I broke them loose.. cool. The oil drain bolt was rounded so I filed it down to 11mm, tapped a 6 sided socket with a breaker bar on there and it gave way. The oil pan contained what looks and smells like it used to be a large clump of human hair-
and there's some signs of rust/water in there..
The PO had drilled the heads off some of the clutch cover bolts they must have rounded, so that whole scene is iffy and I'm not sure how to free the clutch cover decently, and I need to figure out how to get the flywheel/rotor business off. Then the case be 'parted.