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I finished the tear down of the trans. I am glad I took it all the way down. I knew I needed work on the case, but the gears looked pretty good. ( I will post some pics and questions on those once I clean them ) Now that I have it open I can see that the case is not too bad. A weld on one screw casting and three possibly four helicoils and I should be good. Well that and a good polish. In the pictures above I showed the acid damage to the frame, here is where it dripped down on the trans case and totally hosed that pretty polish job. A few hours will have that looking good again, but it could have been avoided with a drain hose!
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Last edited by DoomBuggy; 04-06-2017, 3:47 PM. -
VT No: 7502-2
Oversize engine and transmission drain plug with tap.Take my 45 and outrun em all ..Comment
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Thank you SirComment
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bud I would have all the holes welded and then mach and tappedComment
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yeah but you get a good wealder to fill them in , then machinist does the restComment
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I've built enough cars and bikes to know that the budget I gave the missus is no more then 1/2 of what I am going to end up spending, and that is if I am lucky. I had built in the cost of having the engine built and I think that I am on the high side there, but of course I expect that I will need more then planned, lol.
The trans I thought was in my wheel house and would not need the machining and special tools an engine build would require. Man was I off base there. I have been looking for an arbor to press the main shaft seal in to the correct depth. So far all the tools I have found made to do this seem to assume you are doing it with the shaft installed and are running $250.00 or more. Dang ! !
Looks like I do need to find a machinist near me who is willing to do piece work. Then I could get the case welded by my guy and machined and re-drilled. At the same time I could have him turn an arbor for me.
I forgot how many parts/special tools for the Sporty and Panhead I made in the factory I was working in at the time. I was a maintenance electrician/mechanic and they would let me use whatever I wanted after hours as long as I covered the cost of any expendables I used, man those were the good old days.
More to come, that's for sure.
( Anyone want to buy a Rickenbacker 12 string guitar, lol )Last edited by DoomBuggy; 04-07-2017, 1:28 PM.Comment
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Take my 45 and outrun em all ..Comment
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Now that is out of the ordinary, very cool and the dude knows how to make it sing.Comment
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.../// http://www.justinjohnsonlive.com/home.html \\\...
Tenn Boy ... Bet he could go through the house and make music from an oven rack ...!!Take my 45 and outrun em all ..Comment
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New update.
Yesterday was one of the more enjoyable days I have had in a long time. On Tuesday the missus and I headed down to Bloomington, IL where she was attending a conference. Wednesday morning I woke up, had a nice breakfast at the hotel, and headed over to the town of Pekin to Bone-A-Fide Cycle for a visit with Mr. TBone himself. To start off, he really is a very nice, mellow guy who seems to love what he does. He has a very nice, well equipped shop that should be the envy of any Harley mechanic or hack out there.
Tom helped me unload the motor and we got right to work tearing it down. I don't know about you, but to me that is just so darn cool
Here the story gets fun. I knew my bike was a mutt when I bought it and sure enough the motor is no exception. Based on the mainshaft bearing setup it looks like the cam side is a '54 case ( with '56 belly numbers ), and of course the other is a '56, heads are a '48, jugs are aftermarket. Now the really remarkable part, the jugs were so new that the cross hatch was still clearly visible, HOWEVER the pistons were put in backwards! Not only that but we found at least part of the reason why I only had 40 PSI in the front, the gaps on the rings on that piston were pretty much lined up! In addition to that, the head gaskets were misaligned and blocking about 1/2 of the oil passage. Front jug had oil pooled in it! That explains the short cloud of smoke on start-up, lol. And while the cylinders were new repops, the pistons looked scored and old ( Even though the motor is an FLH, they will get replaced with a modest compression piston that will run well on pump gas. )
The heads looked surprisingly good, Tom still needs to pull the valves to make sure the seats are not to deep, but it looks like they were done not too long ago. Unfortunately at some point the intake nipples were replaced and there is a small, but definite leak where they are set into the head. Tom will explore our options and I hope that goes well.
Another great find, we pulled the chrome aftermarket cam cover and it looks like the cam bushing was put in and then were chromed over. We struggled with trying to get the cam out of the cover until we were at the point of going ballistic on it. New cover and a mild S&S cam coming! And while we are in there the solid lifters are being pulled and a set of S&S hydraulics are going in. My '55 had solids and if I don't have to spend an hour every weekend adjusting them I will be happy as can be.
Moving down, the rods checked out straight and seem to be good and snug on the crank. When I pulled the motor out of the frame I did find one of the rear mounts has a small piece broken out of it. Fortunately Tom is set up for TIG and can repair it for me. The S&S oil pump has been abused with water pipe fittings where the sending unit should go. Hopefully that is all that is wrong there. As a matter of fact I will be sending him my trans case so he can weld up some of the issue on that as well.
Oh one more thing, after about 10 seconds of discussion I reached the decision to replace all the chrome acorn nuts with factory style fasteners. I was guilty of adding these to more than one bike over the years and am more than happy to see them go on this bike!
At this point I had to leave for a teleconference ( working just gets in the way of everything ), but Tom was pretty comfortable with what he had seen.
As soon as my back is done complaining about loading and unloading the motor from my truck I will get back to work on the frame, oh and Tom gave me a homework assignment, he told me how to true up the bottom of the valve covers so I need to work on that next and then send them and the trans down to him.
More to Come............Last edited by DoomBuggy; 04-13-2017, 1:09 PM.Comment
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tom is such a nice guy aint he? after he did my motor he had me over to button up some stuff I was doing later in the build. I swear he was probably glad to see me go. I asked so many questions I know I drove him edgy. were the dogs there?
the nice thing about him doing the work is no matter whats wrong with your motor you know he will fix it right and you can trust him which is a BIG thing to me.
probably like having jesse work on your motor
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Just saw the one big Dobie. Funny dog, barked like a mad dog, but then slid right up against me and wanted his neck rubbed. Still not an animal I would mess with, and certainly not one I would want to run into without Tom there.
I liked the line from Tom about doing work that wasn't needed on the motor. "I'm lazier then I am greedy" That's the guy I want pricing out my job, lol. Seriously, you could see the quality of the work based on some of the other bikes and he was adamant that he would let me know if he found anything else hinky once he pulled the crank out.
If you are not set up to do your own build, Tom looks like the kind of guy you would want doing it for you. I will have to wait a few months for the proof, but my confidence level is high, as they say.
I love the test stand he built, cracked me up on how simple yet perfectly suited to the job it was. When the motor is done I will post up a YouTube video of it running on the test stand.Comment
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Got a picture from T-Bone looks like the motor is getting pretty darn close! Thought I would share.
Edit: I should note I told Tom to take his time on this build as I was not in a hurry to get it back. He took me at my word and did his "Spring Time Customers" before getting to deep into mine.Last edited by DoomBuggy; 07-18-2017, 11:13 AM.Comment
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