Topic: Terry's NEW big Kawasaki build, the "Lockdown 1428" special.

[Terry in Australia]

I ran a CB750 battery in my BMW R100RS back in the day, (because I didn't have 229 beans to buy a BMW battery) but it didn't have the balls to spin that big twin over fast enough to fire it up, so I had to use the kicker, what a PITA..........

[spotty]

what the hel ;Dl are you lot on about ?

 
So your not a Tolkien fan Spott?

WARNING WARNING HIPPY ALERT....HIPPY ALERT.....TAKE APPROPRIATE PRECAUTIONS UP TO AND INCLUDING FIREARMS AND SOAP..... WARNING... WARNING

[Terry in Australia]

Geez that must be bad when an Englishman is threatening to bring out the soap! Anyway, Tolkien wrote the book in the trenches in WW1, which I think was a little bit before the Hippy era?

But what do i know? I'm still struggling to understand why my pistons and my valves dislike each other so much I have to make a mechanical spacer plate to keep them apart? Fcuking aftermarket parts, if they didn't make old bikes go so goddamn fast, I'd leave them stock! Oh wait, that's right, it wasn't stock in the first place, but it was close to having a meltdown due to that cockup by the PO (or his "mechanic") with the cam chain tensioner, what the idiot had done was thread the chain thru the tensioner, not around it? Some folks shouldn't be allowed to own spanners........

But enough whining, it (like me) was cheap, and a good basis for this build. It was the wife's birthday yesterday, and she had a sh1t day, locked herself out of her car at the shopping centre, but locked her handbag and phone in, was so pissed off she asked a tradie to smash the window, but luckily he rang the RACV (auto club) for her, and a tech came out and popped the lock for her. Of course I was gallivanting around on my big blue Yamaha instead of somehow being able to save her, even though she admitted that both sets of keys were in her purse, so all I could have done was ring the RACV anyway.........

My 91 year old ma rang me in a bit of a fluster last night to ask me to buy the wife an orchid, so as I was planning a trip to pick up the aluminium sheet for my spacer plate, I drove across the road to Bunnings (Big Box Hardware, with "Outdoor" section) to buy her one. Now I wouldn't know an orchid from a hole in the ground, so I just assumed that if Bunnings sold plants, they'd sell fcuking orchids, but there you go, they don't. Anyway, she likes anything purple, so I bought her this.

1428 cylinder plate 9 Jul 2020 1 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

Bunnings is a great store, but today was like pension day at the pub, every non social distancing jerk was there, so for the first time since the whole CV thing, I actually wore my mask.

1428 cylinder plate 9 Jul 2020 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

Anyway, I went over to pick up the aluminium plate. The guys there are great, they made me buy half a sheet (company rules) but let me rat thru their offcuts for some other pieces I wanted, so that was good.

1428 cylinder plate 9 Jul 2020 2 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

I had another base gasket that I could take most of the measurements from, but the easiest way to reproduce it was just to trace around it with my sharpie. The holes for the sleeves are the only "unknown" until I lift the Arias block, but it's no biggie, there was only a poofteenth between each sleeve so I can just about fudge it if I need to. I set 2 x 3mm sheets on a couple of sheets of plywood on my Mill/Drill.

1428 cylinder plate 9 Jul 2020 3 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr   

I was just gonna leave it as it was getting late, but I had to try one hole. Holesaws are an ugly tool, they leave ugly holes, but I thought I'd give it a crack, then mill out the remainder with the micrometer adjustable boring tool I bought back in the 90's and never used. (my cousin gave me a proper boring bar from his bike shop, so the tool for the mill has been gathering rust ever since) Anyway, tomorrow I'll drill all the holes, and hopefully it'll look something like what I need to make this engine work. More to follow.

1428 cylinder plate 9 Jul 2020 4 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr     

[754]

Of course you picked up some 2 or 2.5 wide 3/4 alloy bar for her piston support..right ?

[dave500]

#$%*en hell?Terrys head in that mask?so repulsive,but i cant look away!great job on those gaskets.

[PeWe]

One of all Corona faces!
Maybe a matching T-shirt to that mask?
"I was not born this way, Covid-19 forced me"

[dave500]

that mask PeWe is a print of Terrys actual face.

[Terry in Australia]

Ha ha, very good men. Well my old mate Fraser Nisbett once told me, "If you want something done properly, get a lazy man to do it". WTF? When I questioned that logic, he explained that a lazy man will work out how to do the job properly once, rather than an enthusiastic man who will run in and fcuk things up the first time, and spend way more time to get it right. While enthusiasm is a wonderful thing, I think he was right, and I've tried (but not always succeeded) to plan what I'm doing so I don't spend more time than necessary on any particular task. 

So far, I haven't fcuked up my spacer plate. I was worried about the top and bottom plates sliding apart, so I drilled four holes in what will be the "waste" outside of the plates, and screwed some "self tapper" screws into them, and the timber below. I used a 10mm slot drill to find the centre of each cylinder stud hole, drilled through the top sheet, then swapped to a sharp 11mm drill bit, then a 12.5mm bit for all but the two 14mm holes for the studs that have oil returns. It took a long time, but Fraser's advice was echoing in my mind as I kept drilling a hole, swapping the drill bit, drilling a bigger hole, swapping the drill bit, drilling a bigger hole, swapping the drill bit, and drilling the final hole. Booooooooring...... But you gotta do, what you gotta do.

Leaving the adhesive clear plastic sheet over the plate was a good idea, as it's been my experience that permanent markers don't last long on bare aluminium. 

1428 spacer plate 10 Jul 2020 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

I used the same old blunt slot drill to cut the slot for the cam chain tunnel, taking 1mm cuts and cutting well within the lines, then once I finally cut thru both pieces, I just nibbled along the lines, widening it by .5-1mm per cut, to make sure the slot drill didn't bite and do any damage. The hole saw was necessary to cut the initial hole for the cylinder sleeve, then I used my whizz bang boring tool to clean the hole up, and increase the hole size. The internal (bore) diameter is 83.5mm (up from 67mm for a Z1, or 70mm for a KZ1000) so I took the "test" hole out to 84.5mm, but I'll lift the block (Yes Frank, I bought a couple of nice pieces of 25mm thick by 50mm wide alloy flat bar to make the piston blocks, thanks for the hint) and measure one sleeve's OD and bore the plate to that size.

1428 spacer plate 10 Jul 2020 2 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

All going well, it'll fit like a finger in a bum, and I shouldn't need a base gasket. (maybe) I'll spray it with some of that copper gasket spray, and it should be good. That's getting ahead of myself though (sorry Fraser) I shouldn't count my chickens just yet.......... More tomorrow, unless I go over to the storage place and try to get my poor old BMW K100RS running after 6 years of ignoring it. Where does the time go? getting old sucks........

[grcamna2]

Terry,in reply#302 it looks like many of your other bikes were interested to watch the progress of the custom hole saw/gasket making progress,as if they're about to say "Oh,is that how it's done" ?? 

[ken65]

I watched a y tube video of Allen Milnyard making a 6 cyl  z1 gasket out of copper i thought it was pretty cool.
Keep the pictures coming.

[bear]

what the hel ;Dl are you lot on about ?

 
So your not a Tolkien fan Spott?

WARNING WARNING HIPPY ALERT....HIPPY ALERT.....TAKE APPROPRIATE PRECAUTIONS UP TO AND INCLUDING FIREARMS AND SOAP..... WARNING... WARNING

Well if you where to bump into me back in the 70's and early 80's you would have been right on the button Spott.
As a matter of fact I spent 12 months living in a 2man tent at Clarks Beach in Byron Bay most of '79 and 1980.
They where good times.

[754]

Terry, a lot of overhang on that tool.. shorter bar and hss steel cutter will cut nicer.. an way shorter and sharper be better..

[Terry in Australia]

Terry, a lot of overhang on that tool.. shorter bar and hss steel cutter will cut nicer.. an way shorter and sharper be better..

Yep, agreed Frank, but I don't have any of that, and with the lockdown, I'm not allowed outside of my house unless it's for one of 4 reasons, so driving around to the local engineering supply store (which doesn't come under any of those four reasons) could cost me a $1000 fine, so I'll just have to battle along.

I did think about inserting one of the cutters in the horizontal position and see if that'll work, no harm in trying a few different methods, although once the holesaw cuts out 75(+) mm of materiel the boring tool is just trimming off a couple of mm with each cut, and it didn't seem to be bothering it.

[jgger]

Hell Terry, it's aluminum. You could use a carbide tip router bit. With the rpms stepped it should cut nice and clean.

But I'm a carpenter, not a machinist.

[Terry in Australia]

Thanks mate, well I'm neither a machinist or a woodworker, I'm a soldier, and not surprisingly, I'm a far better soldier than I am a machinist or a woodworker, ha ha.

But I do love machines, and machinery, so today I soldiered on. First thing I did was remove a couple of the APE studs, so I could measure the outer sleeve once I lifted the cylinder. If the cylinders weren't so close together I'd remove all the studs and when I pull the block, leave the pistons in their bores Harley style, i.e., pistons in the bores, with the wrist pins pulled. Works great on a VTwin, but not so much on anything else.

1428 spacer plate 11 Jul 2020 2 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

Anyway, the outer sleeve OD apparently measures 87mm. I say "Apparently" because the jaws on my caliper weren't quite long enough to give me confidence that I'd reached the middle, so I intentionally cut the holes in the spacer to 88mm, just to be on the safe side. Considering that the pistons are 83.5mm, that only makes the cylinder walls 2.25mm thick, which sounds about right, the sleeves are understandably quite thin.

1428 spacer plate 11 Jul 2020 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

Due to my current diet, I've been having baked beans with my eggs and bacon for breakfast and I've been admiring these little tins, then putting them in the recycling bin. Yesterday I was looking for a container to store all my small slotting drills and was using a lid from a rattle can, but had a lightbulb moment this morning, so cleaned the can and took it out to the garage to re-purpose as a drill bucket.

1428 spacer plate 11 Jul 2020 3 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

But back to the spacer. I thought about what I could do to allay Frank's concerns about the boring tool, sadly using the horizontal tool hole wouldn't have worked unless I could run my mill/drill backwards, but I can't, so all I could do was use a nice short cutting tool with the thickest shank, and I had no issues at all.

1428 spacer plate 11 Jul 2020 5 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

I did notice though, that as I'd removed so much material from the middle of the plate, the centre was sitting slightly "proud", so the cutter was cutting the high spot on one side of the sleeve hole for a few revolutions before it started to cut on the other side, which pissed me off. I decided to pull both the spacer plates off the machine and once separated, there was aluminium swarf-a-plenty betwixt them, and also the self tapping screws I'd used to hold them together, and just drilling the holes for the cylinder studs had caused "high spots" which needed to be sanded down. I spent the next 30 minutes of so getting the plates deburred. I made a little hold down plate to pull the centre down, and also to avoid swarf getting back in there. It worked well. I ended up with 8 of these that I couldn't bring myself to throw out, anyone need a really big washer?

1428 spacer plate 11 Jul 2020 7 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

Anyhoo, I then had to line up the first hole again before I could take it out to 88mm, which involved much farting around changing chucks, refitting the hole saw until it was cutting the same track in the timber below, locking both axis, etc to ensure that the hole was exactly where it should be. Once I was happy with it, I cut the other three. Took over 1 hour per hole on average, not that it took anywhere near an hour to cut  a hole, just a lot of setting up. It reminded me of when I was the QuarterMaster of the Army Engineering Agency back in 99 when I was fascinated watching a CNC mill doing a magnificent job of making something all on it's own, while changing the cutting bits as necessary, once again on it's own.

Once all the holes were bored, I traced the outline again with the base gasket. Using a hole saw and "The death of 1000 cuts"  treatment from my bandsaw I roughed out the shape, then after trying a few different things to smooth it out, I settled on my favourite old 4 inch angle grinder fitted with a flappy sanding wheel to lightly smooth and shape it, then my electric die grinder fitted with a porting "cone". I then gave it a sand on a flat surface with wet and dry sandpaper on a block, with some WD40 to lubricate it. All in all, it came up pretty well.

1428 spacer plate 11 Jul 2020 9 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

Of course, looking good and fitting good are two different things, but as I haven't lifted the block yet and it was getting late anyway, I laid it on top and was happy to see that everything looked to be lined up.

1428 spacer plate 11 Jul 2020 9b by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

And that dear reader, was how I spent my first Lockdown Saturday. Tomorrow I'll lift the block, put the spacer in place, machine up those piston blocks and hopefully put the head on, do the cam timing, and see if I have enough clearance. We'll see.........  


 


 

[dave500]

bloody good job Terry,imagine all the dick heads in lock down that aint got no hobby?an old bloke on a weigh bridge we use retired not long ago and i was talking to him about what he will do to keep himself busy,i asked about if he did wood work or similar,he replied,"thats the trouble,i dont do any of that #$%*ing sort of #$%*!"

[Terry in Australia]

Thanks Dave, yep, I know a few guys like that, I've been farting around with bikes and cars since I was a kid, so the most boring times for me was any time when I was away from my shed. I had an RSM once, a top bloke, did several tours of Vietnam in the SAS. Back then the mandatory retirement age was 55 which was stupid even then. He lived for the Army, he just loved the life, but when he was forced to retire, he lasted 6 months, had a heart attack, and died sitting in his chair in his garden. My boss, who'd served in Vietnam with him went to his funeral, and afterwards went over to give his wife his condolences. She looked at Don and said, "Don't be sad Don, he wanted to die, and he got his wish".

So lockdown weekend #1 of 5 (all going well, and hopefully no Zombie Apocalypse) is over, and I'm happy to report that it was without major incident. Before I lifted the cylinder block I spent a couple of hours machining up the piston blocks. I made a total of 4, 2 x 25mm high, and 2 x 10mm high, the method in my madness being that once I get the two central pistons into their bores, I can rotate the crank enough to slide the 10mm blocks under the two outer pistons to make them easier to install.

1428 spacer plate 12 Jul 2020 1 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

Once I lifted the cylinder block, I gave them a test fit, and all was good.

1428 spacer plate 12 Jul 2020 4 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

1428 spacer plate 12 Jul 2020 5 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

I flipped the cylinder block over and test fit the spacer. it was actually a little tight, when I expected more of a loose fit. No biggie, just a minute with the dremel and I'd skimmed a couple of thou off the holes for the sleeves, and it was a nice close fit, without being too tight.

1428 spacer plate 12 Jul 2020 3 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

The next issue was the dowels at the front of the engine. the dowels protruding from the Arias block were only protruding around 3mm, and jammed in tight, so using Frank's "threading tap" procedure I was able to pull the dowels out, and discovered that they were around 10mm high, so I tapped them into the recesses in the top engine case, and could see that  they protruded past the spacer plate with plenty of material left to correctly position the cylinder block, without having to make longer ones. Good.   

This was about when I should have come in for the evening, but I got a little over enthusiastic and broke not one, but two compression rings while attempting to install the pistons back into their bores. I think Bill asked if they're still available? They are, thank God, so I've ordered a complete set of four, and I'll install the full set and keep the ones that I haven't broken as spares, just in case. The stupid thing was that I was only going to test fit everything to ensure that I had enough clearance for the valves with the cams installed, so I could have just removed the rings, as I can't finish the top end part of the build until some other stuff I ordered arrives anyway, and I have to take the head back off to paint it, etc etc. Oh well, as another Fraser (Malcolm this time) once said, "Life wasn't meant to be easy". 

Bottom line is the spacer plate fits really well, and I'm pretty sure it'll solve my problem. If it doesn't, well, there are other options. At least I'm not bored.

[ekpent]

 Looks great Terry. Where did you have to order the rings from ? Hopefully they arrive before spring so you can keep moving on that bad boy. Waiting for parts is not fun.

[PeWe]

I'm sure Terry has other nice projects to work on if parts to this build are delayed!

[grcamna2]

Fresh rings  for a better break-in Seal:more even compression and more power.

[ken65]

Good job Terry. Well done.

[Terry in Australia]

Thanks guys, the rings are coming from the US, so no idea when they'll eventuate but interestingly the smaller parcels have been arriving far faster than the big heavy boxes, so hopefully it won't take forever. I've got more Z1 engine parts inbound, but the crankshaft is still sitting in Florida at MyUS.com while they take way longer than usual (due to Covid-19, not their fault) to process items that USPS has confirmed delivery. I've got 2 cranks coming (I don't know why, either....) another ported Z1 head and another Z1 alternator, but while all that's on it's way I can prep and paint the cases, and assemble the gearbox and clutch.

I suppose If I get really desperate I can pull the engine out of my K2 and conduct an autopsy to see why the gearbox let go, and swap the guts across to another set off K2 cases a mate has waiting for me. We both live in lockdowned Melbourne, but about 60 miles apart, so I might have to meet him halfway. Just not sure if I want to have so many bikes apart at the same time, get's kinda messy.........  

[Alan F.]

I'd like to hear about the K2 gearbox, but not at the expense of anyone's safety or even as you said (too many bikes apart). I'll raise my glass in favor of faster delivery so the choice is yours.

[scottly]

Hey Terry, is the cam chain going to be long enough with the spacer under the cylinder block?

[scottly]

What is a "slot drill"?