Lario rehab project begins. What we've learned..

[kevdog3019]

They blew up, too. As far as I know, nobody has a definitive answer..

Oh my!  This little guy has a way of chewing and spitting.

[IceBlue]

I'm looking for a set of the elephants foot adjusters for the Daytona engine i'm building at the moment. What is the valve gear in the photo? these may work.
The thread in the daytona rocker arms is 7mm X 0.75mm.
Can anyone offer any suggestions?
Ciao

The Lario is 6mm so they are no good for you...

[Chuck in Indiana]

I'm looking for a set of the elephants foot adjusters for the Daytona engine i'm building at the moment. What is the valve gear in the photo? these may work.
The thread in the daytona rocker arms is 7mm X 0.75mm.
Can anyone offer any suggestions?
Ciao

Phil, back in the Pleistocene, I had elephants foot adjusters on a VW aircraft conversion. From memory (more than failure prone any more) they were 8mm. but check. They *might* be 7.

[lucky phil]

Thanks Chuck, iceblue. did some digging I think the photo ones are actually KTM 625/640 and I might order one and see if they will fit,trouble is they are about $56 each which is a lot if it doesnt fit. Come to think of it its a lot if they do....8 X $56.
Re the VW ones Chuck, Ive read that the ones to use on the VW engines are Porsche. They dont fail. Wrong size for me though.

Ciao

[Chuck in Indiana]

$56 each

  :o ::)

[Chuck in Indiana]

It’s been a while since I’ve added to this thread. I’ve been fitting up some wheel pants on Mouser, and have them to where they will go on.. but.. it’s too cold out in the hanger to be laying on the floor, etc.  ;D

I’ve recently put the Aero engine in the Lario, and have it running. Guzziology doesn’t have anything good to say about the original ND coils,

 so while I can’t work out in the hanger, I thought I’d put  the Dynas on that I had scrounged over the years. This should apply to most of the small blocks, by the way. The most obvious place is where the originals were..

But.. I’d have to cut the rear coil mount off the frame.  :-\ I really don’t like molesting antique/classic machines in case someone in the distant future wants to restore it because it’s worth 2.3 million dollars.  ;) Just the same, after agonizing about it for entirely too long, I rummaged through my stash of brackets I’ve made over the years for airplanes..

and found some likely suspects.

Still, I was hesitating to start making sparks, and thought maybe I’d better check the other side to make no sh!t sure that both Dynas would fit there.

Hmmm, not really. They are too wide, and pinch the breather hoses as they come out of the box. The breather system is mondo important on the small block.. I don’t want to mess with that.  Maybe underneath?

Oh, yeah.. it would just take a couple of brackets, and I can use the original mounts.  ;-T
Time to make some prototypes out of soft aluminum.. just takes a minute. Whack out a piece on the shear..

Do a little math and decide the hole spacing. Lay it out, and center punch the locations of the two holes. The punch in the home made shim cutter has a point on it, and will locate on the center punch..

like so..

Bend them in the brake

prototype bracket number 1

I likes it.. ;D

Tweeeeeeet! Lunch whistle, back later.
Aaarrrg! 500 error. Good thing I'd typed these pearls of wisdom in Word..  ;D

 

[Chuck in Indiana]

Back from lunch, prototype #2.

When I'm out in SoCal, many times I hang out at MGC, and occasionally do some work for Mark. I've seen several Dyna installations.. some of them good.  ;D The favorite method seems to be to Ty wrap them to a frame tube. Not a good idea.The mounting points are heat sinks, and I'm betting some of the problems with Dyna coils is from the way they are mounted. They need to be mounted solidly to something that can carry heat off.
OK.
Time to shoot the engineer and start production. ;D The spec will be HTFIFPTM. That's Hammer to fit in field, paint to match.  ~; These will take longer. Band sawed a strip and cut it into 4 pieces. This is .094" 4130, just like you make airplanes with.. ;)
Milled them to 5/8" wide.

When I finished milling the last one, I laid it on the bench and there were only three.  ??? I thought, "WTF?" Looked everywhere I'd been. Got on the floor and looked under things. Looked long enough that I could have band sawed and milled out another one. Finally decided that was what I'd do. I'd find the mystery piece some day.  ::) Picked up the short one to use as a template, and there were two.  ::) I'd laid it exactly on top of the other and didn't notice. Old people do stuff like this..  ;D :BEER:

Radiused the corners, because sharp corners are stress risers, and look tacky besides.

Bent them up on the brake. I cheated and didn't drill the last hole in each. I want to get them bolted down in one place so I can accurately locate the last hole.

How long did that take? 2 1/2 hours. Cutting and forming 4130 takes time. Off to see Stan the Hardware man because I don't have any metric hardware, as usual. I'll bolt the brackets to the coils with good ol 'Merican aircraft hardware. Gots lots..

[Chuck in Indiana]

Ok, back at it. An automatic wire stripper makes short work of this little wiring job..

Aircraft crimpers in the background makes bullet proof connections every time. No thinking or skill involved.  ;D Assembled with used (FREE) aircraft hardware, including hi temp lock nuts. Looking back through Dyna threads, it seems the consensus is to use a 1-2 ohm resistor with the 3 ohm coils. I went to the auto parts place and asked for a 1-2 ohm ballast resistor. "A whut?? What's it go on?" oh, you've all heard that one. This one measures 2.1 ohms, hopefully it's not rocket science, and it'll be ok...

Finished up (I hope) except for installing the new RED especially for Lucky Phil  ;D  plug wires and new NKG LBO5F boots that haven't arrived yet. The old metal ones that were on the aero engine aren't the best in the rain..
Oh, and final cabling up of the wiring.

[mwrenn]

Gettin there!!  I am interested in seeing those spark plug boots when you get them.

[Chuck in Indiana]

When the buyer came to look at Rosie, I told him that the Kid had given me that clock and it didn't go with it. As Rosie's titanium music faded into the distance <sigh> I had the clock in my hand. Time to put it on the traveling Lario, so I thought I'd show some fabrication techniques.
Made a rough template out of poster board. Bent it up, transferred the hole location with pencil, nothing fussy.

Modified it to get what I wanted and laid it out on some .065" hard aluminum I had laying around. more on that later.
Center punched the mount hole..

Transfer punched the radius where the arc and straight section meet up.. that's just an eyeball job, too.. nothing fussy.

Remember when I showed you how to grind a sheet metal drill? You'll shortly be very unhappy and bleeding if you don't use one for a job like this. You can (barely) see where the slug where it broke through is still stuck on the drill bit. No grabbing.

Band saw it out. The small hole gives a nice radius and won't cause a stress riser.

Time for some filing. Aluminum is very bad about sticking in the teeth of files. This is called "pinning". My old (naturally) file card keeps the file clean. Stroke the metal bristles in the same direction as the file teeth, the brush the same way. If you keep your file clean, it'll last for freakin ever. If you don't, it'll be toast in no time.

Now to bend it. Remember I said this is hard aluminum? If you put it in the brake, it will break.  ;D Trust me. Sooo, how do we anneal this aluminum? There is a fine line between annealing temperature and melting on aluminum, and it doesn't change color to tell you how hot it is. Make it black with acetylene.. no oxygen.

Then turn the oxygen on to get a neutral flame and *carefully* burn the acetylene off. Quench it in water. Didn't have time to take a picture, had to run to the faucet, so you'll have to imagine steam rolling off.  ;) You can see how hot the aluminum is from the temperature change on the duckbill pliers.

Now, we can put it in the brake without it breaking. (sorry)  ;D The bend radius should be 3X the material thickness on aluminum, so set back the brake jaw that much.

Dang! That's a nice radius.. ;D I'll guarantee it would have broken or at least put some cracks that would break later if we hadn't annealed it.

I'll try not to break my arm patting myself on the back. ;D
Time to paint it.
Wipe it down with grease and wax remover (rubber gloves, please) and spray a tack coat with the trim black. Both are available at your friendly automotive paint store, and the trim black is perfect for non glare without being dull flat black.

The guy that taught me to paint told me to always spray the edges first. If you don't, you'll have shiny edges, and maybe even miss one. So I'll tell you to do that too. The tack coat keeps the final coat from crawling. After it "tacks off" (it turns from shiny to flat) spray the final coat, hang it up to dry, and walk away. The clock has a sticky back, so I masked off the mounting area to keep paint off of it.

How long did that take? Considerably less than telling about it.  ;D I'll be back later to show the finished product.

[Chuck in Indiana]

View from the cockpit..


Ok, now..
bags. check
clock. check
throttle lock. check
That should do it, and we're ready to Drone   ~; across northern Indiana and Illi noise to the rally. Sorry, that was low hanging fruit.. ;D

[kevdog3019]

Nice Chuck!  Looks about the same size as that voltage indicator (that's not too handy IMO)? Hmmm...

[Chuck in Indiana]

Thanks, but I *like* that voltage indicator. Works just fine..

[kevdog3019]

You probably know this, but if there's ANYTHING wrong with the charging system your dash light will glow.  I've got experience with that. ;)  It's the one idiot light I trust over that crusty meter. It looks cool going up and down with the revs though.  8)

[Chuck in Indiana]

You probably know this, but if there's ANYTHING wrong with the charging system your dash light will glow.  I've got experience with that. ;)  It's the one idiot light I trust over that crusty meter. It looks cool going up and down with the revs though.  8)

*Really* late reply to this, but.. by the time the light comes on you already have a problem.  Watching a voltmeter just might let you make a preemptive strike on the electrical system.. I like voltmeters.

[Chuck in Indiana]

I mentioned in the Aero engine rescue thread that the Kid told me after a test ride that the front end was under damped. Told him, "Yeah, I know.. I've had FACs back ordered for like forever."
When I returned from the Ohio rally, they were sitting on the doorstep. Also had a note from MG.. since the exchange rate has changed since I ordered them, they cost $50 less..  Gotta give Rick and Gordon some props.. some people would happily have pocketed the difference..
At any rate, let's get to it. I would think all small blocks would be similar.
Tweeeeeet! Gotta quit for now and fix dinner..

[guzzisteve]

Whew,  for a minute I thought you sent another red SB  into rehab.

[kevdog3019]

I mentioned in the Aero engine rescue thread that the Kid told me after a test ride that the front end was under damped. Told him, "Yeah, I know.. I've had FACs back ordered for like forever."
When I returned from the Ohio rally, they were sitting on the doorstep. Also had a note from MG.. since the exchange rate has changed since I ordered them, they cost $50 less..  Gotta give Rick and Gordon some props.. some people would happily have pocketed the difference..
At any rate, let's get to it. I would think all small blocks would be similar.
Tweeeeeet! Gotta quit for now and fix dinner..

Under dampened yes. The bigger problem is the fit (or play/weakness) between the inner and outer legs. You may get some relief in dampening but the wallow will always be there. I simply can't imagine cheaper/flimsier forks than stockers on these old sb's. I KNOW, I've said it several times yada yada yada, but you'd be SHOCKED how solid these small Tontis CAN feel. Bang for the buck, the best upgrade in performance. My 2 pennies on upgrading these forks.

[Chuck in Indiana]

Ok, this shouldn't take long. Dinner's in the oven..
Since we're moving the gauge panel which includes the ignition switch.. remove the negative lead off the battery. No need making sparks unless you are on a cafe racer show..as Grandma used to say, "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.."
Get the panel out of the way. How to do that has already been addressed on this thread, no need to rehash that.

Loosen the top triple clamps..

Pull the front brakes, loosen the axle nut, then the pinch bolts. Drive the axle out with your brass drift, noting which side of the speedo drive the different sized spacers go.
Rattle gun out the bottom nut that holds the bottom piece on the old screen door closer.

Check that the seal is still ok.
Use your 32mm wrench (cleverly disguised as a 1 1/4" wrench if you are a 'Merican.. to loosen the damper. When you do this, the 100cc of auto transmission fluid in the forks will drain out the bottom.

Here's the assembly compared to the FAC. 

All we have to do is take it apart. The spring isn't terribly powerful, and you can just cave man it down, put a wrench on the nut, hold that, and remove the aluminum end with vise grips. Probably be a good idea to use some leather to keep from boogering it up. 

Here it is disassembled.. the black piece is nothing more than a plastic bushing to keep the spring centered.

I exercised the old damper, and sure enough.. it's toast. The FACs will be money well spent.
We'll put it together tomorrow with any luck at all.

[Chuck in Indiana]

Under dampened yes. The bigger problem is the fit (or play/weakness) between the inner and outer legs. You may get some relief in dampening but the wallow will always be there. I simply can't imagine cheaper/flimsier forks than stockers on these old sb's. I KNOW, I've said it several times yada yada yada, but you'd be SHOCKED how solid these small Tontis CAN feel. Bang for the buck, the best upgrade in performance. My 2 pennies on upgrading these forks.

Kev, you don't seem to get it.  I'm trying to show the typical small block owner how to change out the dampers.. that's all. I'm not building a race bike here. If I was I'd put some modern USD forks like Gixxers on it. I've addressed some of the weakness of the stock forks by the delrin bushings on the fender mount/fork brace, and new dampers will help also. I *wouldn't* be shocked. I know what a Tonti frame can do.

[SteveAZ]

So, I'm going to be "that guy" here.

Dampening is the act of making somthing damp (moist), or decreasing someone's enthisiasm.

Damping is removing energy from from an oscillating system via mechanical means (now we're talking suspension)

I have no argument with anything in this thread and am following it with great enthusiasm and learning a boatload of new things. It's just that my aerospace engineer ears start bleeding a little when I hear this terminology mixed up which it is more often than not, including in the aftermarket suspension industry where it's rampant and folks have been doing suspension longer than I've been breathing air have been saying it wrong all along. Still, it's damping.

OK, back to my popcorn and learning.

[kevdog3019]

Kev, you don't seem to get it.  I'm trying to show the typical small block owner how to change out the dampers.. that's all. I'm not building a race bike here. If I was I'd put some modern USD forks like Gixxers on it. I've addressed some of the weakness of the stock forks by the delrin bushings on the fender mount/fork brace, and new dampers will help also. I *wouldn't* be shocked. I know what a Tonti frame can do.

Chuck,
     I understand full well what you're doing. There are two ways to skin a cat; both educational.

[ITSec]

Chuck,
     I understand full well what you're doing. There are two ways to skin a cat; both educational.

I think my cats would prefer to remain blissfully ignorant... 

[Chuck in Indiana]

Alrighty now.. let's finish this up. I drilled a half inch hole in some soft plastic so I wouldn't booger up the air valve during assembly..

Just a matter of pulling the spring down and screwing the aluminum gizmo (technical term) on the end and tightening the lock nut. The slot on the gizmo is what slides over the fork leg drain screw as an anti rotation device when you are tightening or loosening the screw that holds the bottom fork leg on.

Drop the assembly in the fork leg with the notch in the back. Wiggle it around a little to make sure it's keyed, and run the bottom screw home.
Oh. Do them one leg at a time to keep the lower fork lets from falling on the ground.. 
Now all you have to do is fill them. If you put a little pressure on the bottom of the leg
everything moves up


 and you have room to put 100cc of ATF in each leg.

Screw the caps down, and you're done. Total time? About a couple of hours.. an easy job.
View from the cockpit..

While I'm right here, I thought I'd see how the Gaudy Gaiters (tm) had done their job after several thousand miles.

No need to even add some more grease. 
The Milich Special Rusty Bubs had started to revert to their natural state, so I pulled them off and gave them another couple of coats of paint.

Ready for the Kentucky rally..
As an aside, I wondered about how much air to put in the new FACs. I thought I remembered zero. Using our new and improved search engine, that's what came up. What I did learn, though, is there is a bladder in the FACs (assuming they are the same as the LeMans units) and the more air pressure you add, the more damping you get. We'll see after road test/break in..
Don't know why Photobucket decided to turn these pix around. Some things aren't meant to be understood.. <scratching head>
At any rate, there's no need to fret about changing dampers in the small block. Small blocks are easy

[Chuck in Indiana]

Ok, one last thing before leaving this damper install..
When searching here, I read conflicting information. Surprise surprise.  Some said that if you add air it pressurizes the fork leg and blows fork seals.
I though, Hmmmm, what's up with that? Shirley  it wouldn't be designed that way.. so I took the old one apart before dumpstering it.
Well, well. You can see how it works. Oil is forced through the two orifices, and air pressure in the bladder impedes the flow making damping stronger. More air, more damping.
If putting air in the dampers causes a fork seal to fail, it's because the bladder in the damper has already failed. This one had. So... it makes sense to me to at least put *some* air pressure in the bladder so it will possibly (just a gut feeling, no science involved) hold it's shape, and flex less.
At any rate, I'm going to do that.

[Antietam Classic Cycle]

I posted a photo much the same a while back to clarify just how the original dampers worked, yet misinformation persists. But, I thought I had read that FACs were different - the air pressure fills the fork? Has anyone had one apart and can provide the truth? 

[Chuck in Indiana]

I can't imagine an engineer designing something that depends on a fork seal to hold 50 psi.. but no, I didn't take the opportunity to screw up my new dampers.. 

[Xlratr]

I can't imagine an engineer designing something that depends on a fork seal to hold 50 psi.. but no, I didn't take the opportunity to screw up my new dampers.. 

I put the FACs in my T3 and also neglected to take them apart! :-).
I'm 99% sure they have the bladders, but I didn't put any air in as the damping seems fine without.
John

[Chuck in Indiana]

Ok, I couldn't stand it. I hooked up a high pressure bicycle pump. This pump is hand operated, and has roughly a 3/8" diameter piston and about a 6" stroke. The point I'm making is there is no way there is enough volume per stroke to fill a fork leg. One stroke put the FAC at 45 lbs. (!)
There *has* to be a bladder. <shrug>

[Groover]

This looks like a great thread. Gonna have to start from the beginning when I have a little more time. So far I've just jumped around a couple of pages, and a few things jumped out at me: A nice work shop, good skills, proper tools for the job, an airplane, nice ripe tomatoes in 2014, and of course, a Guzzi project... This is like catching reruns of a past TV series that you completely missed - I'm hooked!