Goodness, has it been a month since I last posted? It hasn't been for lack of tragicomic events and twists of wrenching fate.
After the triumph of getting the new guides in, getting them reamed was next headache. After badgering local sohc types, someone finally coughed up the name of a decent machinist, Premier Tools in Burr Ridge. So for my birthday, me and the gf travelled to the hinterlands of Chicago suburbia to get guides reamed and a guided tour of the facility by Lou, the owner. Nice. $80 bucks and half a week later, my reaming needs are fulfilled. I had to use the gf's 350 to get out there, and by the time I lug 50 lbs. of head cylinder home in my backback, I'm feeling the burn.
Genius that I am, I realize I pounded out all the old valve guides without realizing that I was pounding out the oil orifice control jets as well. God. Damn. It.
The good news is that one of the jets somehow stayed in. The bad news is that other one is lost somewhere in the greater Chicagoland area. But local sohc4 legend Big Bob bails me out. He has a spare, mine for the price of a decent 6-pack. God bless that bear of man.
I'm so flush with parts-finding success that I almost forget the main reason I undertook this whole rebuild - I still have to helicoil the #2 spark plug hole. I'd gotten lucky and just jammed it in last summer, and was rewarded with a whole year and about 5500 miles of problem-free riding. See, it does pay to do things half-assed sometimes.
But its time to set things right, and I immediately set about to finding a 12 x 1.25 helicoil kit. These are apparently made of gold, magic and pure imagination because they're unavailable. Anywhere. Every auto supply store, every Sears and every conceivable place is checked - Nothing. Finally, a clerk at O'Reilly's lets me look through the inventory, and there it is. $55 later, I'm home and botching the tap process something awful. I get the tap in, but at a wrong angle. I back it out, manage to drill a better line, and get the helicoil to take. Its nice to have the head off so I can trim the coil properly, but I don't know if the helicoil will seal properly until I sew the bike up.
With the help of Hondaman's 750 bible and paint stirrers, I put the cylinders and top end back together. Nothings seems out of whack, except I discover the PO switched all the camshaft holders for fun. Everything's put where it should be, gaskets are replaced and everything's torqued, then again the next day. Oh, and I lapped the valves the week before. They have nice broad seats now. Life is always better with broad seats.
I'm trying to get this bike up and running for the great park-a-thon that is Mods vs. Rockers here in Chicago. I don't like crowds, much less ones composed of people with cafe-related themes and/or accessories, but this is the carrot dangling in front of me. I don't even know why anymore. I just want to ride my bike here. And its in two days. So instead of waiting for friends or other ChiVinMoto types to help me hoist the engine back in, I decide to try a solo attempt using the laying-down technique. Cardboard is put on the lawn, odd 2 x 4's are used, and I start eyeballing angles.
In one way, it was a great success. But in another more accurate way, it was bad idea jeans. It took longer than two hours to complete, my back is killing me and I fed an entire community of mosquitos in the process. But it can be done, even by weaklings and girl-hands such as myself. The pictures pretty much sum it up. Hondaman's tip about only needing to thread the front and back bottom bolts before righting the bike helped a lot. I am proud to say that I didn't lose a single fingernail in the process.
So everything goes back on the bike, and headers are given a new coat of BBQ paint that is a huge improvement over the Soviet fingerpaint that MAC originally used. Breather tubes are added and routed correctly, oil is added, blah blah. And now, for the moment of truth. I stupidly didn't take a friend up on their offer of bench testing the engine first, so if something is really screwed up, I'm screwed in turn. Drumroll, please.
It coughs on the second kick, and actually fires on the 5th or 6th. Its unhappy, but cheers up when oil starts flowing and warming. It doesn't hurt that I finally remember to add the final quart of oil, too. Having only ridden a few miles, its too early to call it a success. I'm paranoid that any small particle of dirt or old gasket will clog the oil jets, so I'm watching closely for signs of overheating. The initial smoking after a rebuild always freaks me out, but it seems to just be errant oil on the headers and heads. But for now, I'm back on the road.
I think.
1. Purty new A.P.E. guides.
2. Correctly matched cam holders. You can see the wear from being installed improperly.
3. Random cat that just showed up, and supervised me. Called her "Spanner".
4. Results of the botched, but ultimately saved helicoil.
