First- Dave, thank you for all your input. It's been invaluable. I mean, everyone's been great, but your help with the tensioner fitting was perfect. I'll recheck the timing before I slap the hat back on.
Here's how Saturday went down...
First, my upstairs neighbors/landlords/awesome people had their not-quite-so-awesome grandchildren over that starting making noise like only toddlers with wooden toys on a hardwood floor can. Right over my bed at 7:30 in the morning. So I was up, showered, breakfasted and at my brother's shop by 9:00, and re-torquing the bolts. They held tension perfectly this time.
Next, I dropped the cam in. Even as I was undoing the wire that kept the cam chain from falling into the tunnel, I had a weird feeling in my gut and put the wire on the work place instead of in the bin. Take a moment to look at this picture. Notice anything about, oh, say, the tip of the cam chain tensioner on the left side? Perhaps how it's not letting the cog sit in the middle?
That's right, it wasn't in the right place. But that was impossible, right? We got it place so perfectly and easily, couldn't feel it rattling against anything when we moved the crank shaft...
I did what I should have done first- pulled the two center pipes back off (including the crossovers, that were STILL a pain to get just right), and dropped the oil pan. Sure enough, there was the tip of the *&^%$#@ tensioner. Also, the oil pan appeared to be leaking a bit.
Notice the "I" instead of "we"? Yeah, my brother was out of town this weekend, so this was all two hands, not four.
Next, off came the outer pipes, the bolts were de-torqued
again, pulled the cylinder head (not easy with one person, but not too bad if you just let the chain fall in and pull the wire through the tunnel later), then the head gasket and started fiddling with it. I happened to be noodling around some other forum thread Friday, and noticed Dave mentioning something about putting the tensioner lock screw through the cylinders, and then dropping the whole shebang in, and that's how I finally got it to go- after about 20 minutes of screwing with it. I was getting seriously frustrated. Luckily, right before I got it, my girlfriend showed up with one of her projects (lacquering paper drink coasters with owls on them- that's right, even when my sweety is being girly, she makes freakin' drink coasters!), and that prevented the real blowup. I got it dropped in shortly after her arrival and verified it through the gaping maw where the oil pan is. Stacked it, torqued it, got lunch. I'm getting way too good at this.
Then I got the oil pan back in after lunch (feeling much more human now), and got it all torqued to spec. I suspect I didn't have it nearly tight enough the first time, hence the oil leak. I'll keep an eye on it. Then my sweety helped me get the pipes hung again, which went much easier with the left hanger already banged back into shape, and got the headers torqued to spec. Again, much tighter than they had been.
Then the cam went in smooth as butter, the cog, the chain (get the chain on the right side of the cog and it'll go on really easily), I got it all to TDC before hand, so it was just a matter of lining the cam up, walking the chain back and forth to the right spot, and bolting the cog in place.
Notice the blood in the glove. Something bit me.
But this was not the end of the put it together/take it apart/put it together again order of the day.
Next I cleaned up the manifolds, put new seals in them, and snugged them down nice and proper. Then new screws into the aluminum straps around the hard rubber bushings between the manifold and the carbs, where I noticed that some of the straps were wide and relatively short with fat screws, and others had thinner screws, were narrower, and a bit longer. Too long to do much. Since they were clearly too long for the manifold side, I figured they went on the other side and that the carbs might expand them a bit. Nope, no dice, too big. I snugged the screws down for now and made a mental note to get the proper straps.
The the carbs went in really easily.
Then I grabbed the soft rubber boots between the carbs and the airbox, and noticed that
those straps were a bit too short. Lightbulb! I checked and... yep, someone had swapped the straps out. I pulled the too-long ones off the bushings, and put the proper ones on. The longer ones fit the boots perfectly (for those keeping track, this was the fourth thing today I took off the bike today- the head/cylinder, oil pan and pipes being the others).
But then the boots wouldn't wiggle in. Just weren't having it. Sigh. Off came the carbs (five...) and on went the boots.
Then I got the carbs wrestled in place, and I do mean wrestled. That was not easy at all. Took a lot of finesse and a lot of brute strength to bend that much 36 year old rubber without wrecking anything. And then I finally got it all lined up, and the boots didn't want to reach all the way. Just wouldn't go.
So
then I remembered to loosen the airbox, and that gave me enough wiggle room to get the boots strapped down snug.
Looking all pretty!
See that there's only one fuel line sticking up? Yeah, the short one kept getting tangled, so I went to tug it apart at the filter, and the bastard snapped right off on me. Got me pretty miffed at first (grr argh, another trip to the motorcycle store during work hours...) and then I realized that a) they probably sell those at the auto parts store and b) I have to go there anyhow to get oil. And then I was mollified.
Busted fuel filter.
The next step is the head cover and the tappets. To be perfectly frank, I'm fearing those a bit. Do they need to be torqued? I have no idea how I'd do that without wiggling them all over the place. I'm inclined to use a box wrench to snug the lock nuts down, so I can keep a screwdriver in the slots. Anyone have any sage advice?
Goal is to get it running this week, or Saturday at the latest, so I can take it for a shakedown ride on Sunday.
