Bernie's Budget Beast (SP1000)

[Motorad64]

Nice project!!

[berniebee]

Did you do the cleaning with the tires on?
I need to clean mine, which are still painted, and I'm hoping the tires don't get ruined by chemicals.

Yes I cleaned with the tires on.  But the tires are just rim protectors at this point, they will be replaced.

[berniebee]

Time for a new camchain tensioner. The original rubber block tensioner was looking pretty, but not really doing much. I could have adjusted it to take up the slack, but it's probably the original 1983 rubber...




And the chain had started to slap the inside of the case.




First,  a scrap piece of aluminum bar stock (“I knew it would come in handy one day!””  -says I, the guy with too much garbage in his garage.) was cut and drilled to become my special Gootsie flywheel retainer tool.



I was able to get the round crankshaft nut off with a punch and a hammer.
The camshaft nut and oil pump nut weren’t a problem . Here they are all loose.




Remembering to align the marks on the crank and cam shafts, I used a puller with some conveniently sized washers, bolts and nuts to pull the cam sprocket. the other sprockets came off with a good tug.



I spent "only" ten minutes looking for the oil pump shaft's tiny Woodroffe key. #@##!

The new tensioner was a bit of a pain to put in. I had to flatten the curve of the tensioner by clamping it to the right side of the engine case. To avoid mangling parts with the toothed jaws of a small long nosed locking plier, I inserted a piece of plastic (courtesy of a peanut butter jar) to protect the tensioner surface and a short piece of rubber hose over the jaw to grip and clamp on the engine case. On the third attempt all sprockets went in!
Here it is, with the round crank nut replaced by a very expensive hex nut, all nuts secured with Locktite 262. I had to buy deep 27mm and 32mm sockets for this job.




Bonus, the 27mm deep socket was just the right size to install the new camchain cover oil seal!

[berniebee]

Nice project!!

Thanks. It's gonna be a long one, I suspect.

[berniebee]

My transmission has been in bits for a few months. Last week I received a transmission gasket kit and a few shift drum shims and other parts from MG Cycle. I unpacked my own pile of Guzzi transmission parts:




First thing on the "to do" list: Replace the rear input shaft bearing, which basically fell apart when I disassembled the transmission. The cage was bent, so erring on the side of caution it's coming out. Easy to do with a heat gun, heating the whole assembly to start and then focusing on the area around the bearing.



The freezer cooled new bearing slipped right in.

I followed Pete Roper’s excellent article on shimming the shift drum.  My drum had a lot of end play which apparently is not unusual and is the cause of many a false neutral.  Because the shifter forks showed no wear, I simply increased the size of the shim at each end by 0.2mm and that left it with an almost imperceptible amount of play.

I followed John Noble’s detailed and excellent procedure on disassembly and assembly, with one exception. John says that after installing the input shaft, you can install the middle (Cluster ) shaft and then lastly the output shaft. You lie, John! There was no way I could install the output shaft after the middle shaft. I had to install the two latter shafts coupled together.

I found that an automotive trim remover is a good seal removal tool.




 And a 1-1/2" ABS (plumbing) pipe, sanded to a slightly smaller O.D. is a great seal driver for the input and output shafts.




No parts left over- a good sign! Actually I installed one more part than I took out. A tiny washer on the output shaft, which was used on later transmissions. Supposedly it supports the o-ring above it to help prevent oil leaks.




The other mod: I replaced the ridiculous round nut which holds the hub on to the input shaft with a hex nut and Loctite 262.

Guzziology has been a great help with the Guzzi and here’s one tip I used. The end case gasket was too small. There was no way the gasket screw holes were going to line up correctly .Richardson’s tip is to wet it briefly, wipe it off and then install it.




Worked like a charm.




All together with new gasket and oil seals and aluminum washers, and the transmission seems to shift ok!

[berniebee]

Bearings! I love it when a bike uses common, cheap bearings. Both the Guzzi headstock and swing arm bearings are common as roaches. The original headstock bearings were removed a few months ago.
It's pretty straightforward to install new ones, but you need the right size bearing drivers.
Just freeze the parts that need shrinking, that is the steering stem and the upper and lower bearing shells:



picture upload site


And heat the parts that need expanding- the headstock and roller bearings, remembering to grease the bearings beforehand. Then drive the lower roller onto the steering stem. I had a piece of tubing that was just right to drive the roller bearing on to the stem. Ok, maybe a little long...




And don't forget to install the rubber seal and metal washer beneath the bearing first! That's frost on the lower triple tree.




Then heat the headstock gently with a heat gun (It's easy to blister the paint.) and use the tools shown below the headstock to install the upper and lower bearing shells. Luckily, I also had just the right O.D. pipe to drive the shells in.




I kept putting off installing new swing arm bearings, because you need a blind bearing puller to get the old ones out. But Princess Auto (Canada's Harbor Freight) never did put their puller kit on sale in the year I was looking at one. So I have to pry open my wallet for full price, for a tool I was going to use for five minutes. And I'll probably never use it again! First I pried off the seals at each side:



And here's the set up to pull out the bearing shell. Note the heatgun and WD40, both help.



Here's a pic of the old shell on the driveshaft side. Pretty bad brinneling, no?




Just like for the headstock the new bearing shells were tossed into the deep freezer for a couple of hours to shrink them before installing.

[berniebee]

My heart double timed for a moment when I pulled the oil pan and saw this metal rod sitting in the oil:



It was just the shaft of an old oil dipstick.

Cleaned up the pan and saw no damage there or above. It's looks like it fell in while the engine was stopped.

[Scout63]

Looking good and moving fast Bernie. Thanks for the excellent pictures.

[berniebee]

Before installing the clutch, I applied J.B. Weld (epoxy) to the camshaft blanking plug, a new gasket for the crankcase vent and new aluminum washers to the oil drain back pipe banjo fitting.




Installed the flywheel with Schnorr type washers under the bolt heads:




A three part clutch alignment tool. From left to right the: clutch hub, a center stand bracket spacer and a M12-1.5 x 90mm bolt.





If you angle the torque wrench so that it crosses center while you are tightening, you can easily keep the flywheel from turning with your other hand. No need for a flywheel holder tool.




Remembered to install the clutch center before dropping the transmission on to the back of the motor!




And then installed the push rod and o-rings.




The other clutch bits went in without incident.

[berniebee]

I've always wanted to try electroplating zinc and the Moto Guzzi was the excuse to do it.

Zinc is relatively cheap. My one not-absolutely-necessary-but-nice-to-have buy was a DC-DC converter with a current limiter. $15 on Aliexpress. You can see the black power brick that supplies 12 volts to the convertor in the background. It's from a box of old power bricks and adapters collected from phones, toys, computers and industrial equipment.





In this image I am plating the two center stand brackets, but it worked better with just one at a time.




Plating the large engine mount bolt:




I don't have "before" pics, but trust me, these brackets and the bolt and nut were really bad. In the foreground is the bracket lightly polished with a brass wire wheel on a dremel and some fine steel wool. The bracket in the background is unpolished zinc. On the mounting bolt, I polished only the head and the threaded end.




"Honey, just a minute. I'm polishing my nuts."

[Roy gardner]

But with ArmorAll on the cush rubbers and couple of clamps, the cush plate easily slid in. And bonus,  I've got the best looking cush rubbers in town.



Install the fiber ring and retaining plate with three new bolts, (Because they were all reluctant to come out, one broke off, and I had to drill and re-tap the hole.
Yes, I ran the tap in the other two holes for good measure.)

Bernie, for 30 years now we have been drilling a 1/2" or 13mm hole through the cush rubbers. I'm surprised no one else brought this to your attention. This allows the cush rubber to actually work, the little wedge can compress and expand. When it's a solid block, there is nowhere for it to flex.
It makes a noticeable difference to gear changes and a bigger difference to drive line spline wear. I was skeptical for a while, because I own a V7 Sport which has no cush in the wheel. Then I drilled a set for someone else's bike and immediately felt the effect. I shortly thereafter found an 850T wheel, drilled the rubbers & fitted it to my Sport. Great!

[Roy gardner]

[qu

Worked like a charm.




All together with new gasket and oil seals and aluminum washers, and the transmission seems to shift ok!
[/quote]

Bernie, this is a great thread, I'm loving it. You have done a great job on your trans for a first timer. Interesting that you found a hex nut for the front shaft, I trust you torqued both the front & rear nuts to the specs? It's really important, the shafts float and wear bearing edges if they are not seriously tight. I have stripped transmissions which have left loose and they are are invariably a tragimess inside.

[berniebee]

The sliders are fairly rough cast under that paint (and filler), so you'll have a bit of "smoothing" to do if you're going to polish them.

You weren't kidding, Charlie. These sliders had really uneven surfaces with some deep pitting. And the fork paint was tenacious. It laughed at my paint stripper. I used an oscillating sander to get some of the paint off, then a brass wire wheel on a bench grinder, then #100 grit by hand for an hour. Then 200, 400, 600 and 1,000 to get this. I just couldn't get rid of all the deep imperfections. A few hours work resulted in this:




I'll try the buffing wheel tomorrow, then I'll check this picture of an assembled SP to see which sides of the sliders "show". The hidden parts aren't getting anymore work done!

[berniebee]

Success! Sort of. They are far from perfect, with one noticeable gouge and some small areas which remain pitted.  But considering that fork sliders generally are seen from at least a couple of feet away, they'll do. I'll try not to look at them too closely when I'm bleeding the brakes. 





I'm waiting for for fork seals to arrive from MG Cycle  (Canada customs agency is agonizingly slow to process packages these days.) so I'll move on to something else.

[berniebee]

Bernie, for 30 years now we have been drilling a 1/2" or 13mm hole through the cush rubbers. I'm surprised no one else brought this to your attention. This allows the cush rubber to actually work, the little wedge can compress and expand. When it's a solid block, there is nowhere for it to flex.
It makes a noticeable difference to gear changes and a bigger difference to drive line spline wear. I was skeptical for a while, because I own a V7 Sport which has no cush in the wheel. Then I drilled a set for someone else's bike and immediately felt the effect. I shortly thereafter found an 850T wheel, drilled the rubbers & fitted it to my Sport. Great!

Hi Roy, I missed reading your post a few days back. Those dang advertisements on this forum pop up and sometimes it looks like a post is just an advertisement with no actual content from a member of the forum. About the cush rubbers. While I was working on the wheels, I had a look and  there didn't seem to a consensus on the forum as to whether holes were an advantage. As you mention, some of the earlier bikes don't even have rubbers. So I've decided to do an experiment and add another data point to the discussion.  I'm going to leave them as is until I've ridden the bike for a while to get a feel for the shifting. (This is my first Guzzi.) Then I'll drill the rubbers, ride a bit more and report back to the forum. The drive splines at the transmission, drive shaft and rear end all look very good at 40,000 miles.

-Bernie

[berniebee]

Painting! Definitely not my area of expertise. But the paint on the tank is tired, a bit rusty and there's a shallow but noticeable dent on the left upper flank. The metal back fender is also rusty and the front plastic fender has chipping paint. One side cover doesn't have the same colour scheme as the rest of the bike.  I'm determined to DIY this bike as much as possible, so the garage is now a (spray can) paint shop.
With the advent of 2K clear in a can (Spraymax) It's possible to get a decent, hard wearing finish with rattle cans.  Not to show bike standards maybe, but that was never my goal.


Degrease/ wash all the parts and then remove the red/white striping on the tank and one side cover with a heat gun:



Then I notice Luigi at the factory left a short and curly under the paint: Uh. Oh well, that will sand off.



Finishing putty and sanding:



And again:



And again:



Except for the front fender every part required a bit of putty and sanding.
A couple of coats of filler/primer:






Careful sanding with #800 and then three coats of Duplicolor Toyota Deep Blue Pearl  (8P4): I love this colour and the white Moto Guzzi badges will really pop. Maybe some classic arcing white stripes too? We'll see.


combination emojis

It's really pretty good looking at this point.
I'll wait a week for the colour coat to harden and then apply two or three coats of 2K clear.

[Pescatore]

Looking sharp. 

[berniebee]

While the clear coat on the tank and other painted parts is curing...the fork seals came in, so time to reassemble the forks.
I am replacing the old, damaged dampers with slightly used ones, bought from a a WildGuzzi member. (Thanks Val!)

Below the old brass coloured dampers and the newer-ish dampers. Note how the threaded top caps are integral to the old dampers, but a separate piece on the new ones.




Stick a thin object through the rod hole and twist the spring around



Until the spring compresses enough to expose the rod's circlip



Remove the circlip



Then pull off the long and short springs and bits from the damper rod.



Loosen the nut so that you can separate the damper from the rod.



Then reverse all of this to assemble using the new damper.
The way I remember to orient seals is that the spring side always faces the liquid you are trying to keep from leaking out.



Start the seal replacement by pushing the fork slider down on to the seal



Then drive the seal home using a suitable driver. I used a 32mm 1/2" drive socket, but a 34 mm would be even better.






Slip the spring seat on to the spring end. Notice the projection along the top edge at about 5 o'clock.



Invert the rod and slip the slider on to it. Rotate the slider until the projection slips into the slider slot. You will feel a definite clunk as it drops in. Then thread and tighten the rod bolt into the bottom (The top, in this pic) of the slider.
Here I've already installed the small drain bolt with a new gasket. You can just see the head of that bolt, screwed into the right side at an angle, near the axle hole.



Slip the fork tube past the fork seal into the slider . I found that the seal lips were very prone to curling down as the fork tube slipped past. And staying that way. It took a few tries before the lips obeyed.



Clamping the fork to a suitable stand made adding the ATF easier.



WTF? 600ml is definitely not going to fit into this fork!



OH wait. 0.060 L is 60 ml. (Forehead slapping here.)
Anyway, after cleaning up the mess and pouring in the correct amount, the caps can be screwed on and the dust seals slid on.
 Two decent looking forks.



The fork caps are soft aluminum and as received were pretty scratched up and rough looking. About an hour with 100, then 320 sandpaper and a polishing wheel and they looked really nice. This done before before installing them, of course. Another shiny bit to catch my eye when I'm sitting on the bike!

[Pescatore]

Good pictures.
About the seal that you drove in with socket... how did you remove the original seal?

[berniebee]

Good pictures.
About the seal that you drove in with socket... how did you remove the original seal?

I don't remember specifically, but it was likely with the same orange handled automotive trim tool that I used to remove transmission seals and swing arm seals. You can see it in a couple of pics in this thread.

[Pescatore]

  gotta get me one.

[berniebee]

I ordered a vapor blaster kit from Amazon for my pressure washer with the goal of removing the last bits of stubborn paint on my valve covers and hopefully the deep oil stains on the engine.
Here you can see the covers, pre blasting, screwed to a piece of plywood, These have been mostly cleaned up, but you can still see bits of black paint near the bolt holes and the surface has a mottled appearance.



And this is after. I'm sanding the gasket surface on sandpaper/glass plate.



how can i download pictures from facebook

The gasket surface came out perfect:



Here is the engine pre-vapor blasting: You can just see the red rubber sheet material clamped by plywood at the exhausts and the starter mount location. Elsewhere I used various rubber plumbing caps, rubber chair leg caps, and duct tape.



And after vapor blasting. Conditions were ideal. Hot and windy.



NOTE: These vapor blasting kits are advertised on Amazon as "Pressure Washer Sandblasters" , which implies that you can use sand. I did use masonry sand- with a cartridge mask, goggles, outdoors, on a windy day.  Sand is banned as a blast media in most countries with good reason. Blasted sand breaks into tiny silica pieces which cause serious damage to your lungs. BEWARE. Those Utube videos with guys using play sand with NO protective equipment? Idiots.  End of rant.

I think I'm finally ready to assemble the bike!

[berniebee]

One more thing before I put the engine in the frame, er, frame on the engine.
The bike came sans steering lock key, so:
I pried off the cover



Used a punch to knock the cylinder loose



Used a broomstick inserted into the steering head to push the cylinder part way out and dragged it completely out with vise grips.



The new lock assembly from MG Cycle:



Put the spring on the barrel and inserted the barrel part way until that little slotted screw hits the frame.



Then twisted the key CCW until the slotted screw lines up with the slot in the frame and push the assembly in.



Then hammered in the new pin to retain the cover.



Installed the frame rails, then with the help of my son, Installed the frame. In this pic I removed the long bolt to coat it with antiseize.


I had a bear of a time trying to install the fork tubes.  Which reminded me how hard it was to remove them last year. The holes in the lower triple clamp are an extremely tight fit on the fork tubes. Sanding the the holes in the triple clamp to remove the paint helped but I still had to hammer a punch from the bottom to expand the triple clamp holes.


Installed the swingarm bearing, followed by the seal and spacer.






And repeat for the other side.
The swing arm went in without too much effort.


Crap, I forgot to install the headlight supports! Oh well.



Installed the rear plastic fender, battery plate, mid frame brackets and foot pegs.







 

[nmroadrunner]

Your attention to detail is amazing...following with great interest! 

[berniebee]

I'm thrifty but when it comes to brakes I don't take any chances.
Every rubber part in the master cylinder and caliper is crucial, so I replace everything.
Into the vice and using compressed air the pucks come out:



matsuo basho




The caliper assembly screws were extremely tight.



But eventually all three calipers came apart:



Brembo's caliper rebuild kit instructions come in a wee booklet that unfolds into a giant poster, printed on both sides!



 I replaced the rusty pucks in the rear caliper with anodized ones, but the coated front ones were fine. All done, except for the pads, which I'll install later. After a heavy duty cleaning and touch up with an tiny artists brush using flat rust paint, the calipers look acceptable.



I also rebuilt the master cylinders.(No pics.)  These are straight forward. insert a thin punch into the fluid outlet and tap the entire piston and seal assembly out.



Inspect the cylinder bore to make sure it's not damaged and check that the tiny holes in the bottom of the reservoir aren't blocked.
Lube seals and insert the new piston assembly. Using a deep socket, hammer the lock ring into place. EDIT: It took me a fair bit of research to find out, that the lock ring should be oriented so that the larger end is facing away from the piston. (The Brembo kit instructions are hazy on this point.)  That's it. Both master cylinders are now on the bike!



...and as soon as I finished tightening the mounting bolts on the rear MC (above), I realized that there was not enough room to remove the banjo bolt in order to install the brake line- Doh!

[berniebee]

Your attention to detail is amazing...following with great interest! 

Thanks!

[berniebee]

My SP1000 didn't have the original instrument dashboard. Instead it came with a stainless steel plate for the instruments and warning lights:




Not to my taste, so I bought a console base and dash panel from MG cycle






 
And realizing I needed rubber bushings to mount the console, I ordered them too.



They were too big to fit into the mounting holes!  It would have been nice if MG had clearly indicated that the bushings they sell don't fit the consoles they sell. But MG has otherwise been stellar with my orders, so it's a minor quibble.
Anyway, I now had the problem of how to rubber mount the console.
After a long search, I found appropriately sized aluminum tubing (Which I cut to length.) and rubber washers:



Stack the washers around the tubing:



Push this assembly into the console mounting holes, (Very tight fit- a good thing.) and assemble everything with a round head hex screw and a wide SS washer top and bottom:





Not a perfect solution, because the console could slide down the column of rubber washers unitl it touched the bottom SS washer.  But that shouldn't happen quickly, because the rubber washers are tight to start with inside the mounting hole and the tightened screw compresses the rubber washers even more. It will do for now.

[berniebee]

I've been looking at the electrical system and the closer I look, the more expensive this project gets. The bike came equipped with the EnDuraLast high output alternator with the Ducati Energia regulator and the Dyna III ignition system with Dynatek coils. Both great upgrades, but installed with not much care. It was also fitted with a 3rd party dash panel, so all the wiring was sliced and diced and taped here too. The result is that there are a LOT of chopped and taped leads. (Insert swear words here.)  Two examples below:





Many of the 38 year old spade lugs and other connectors are severely corroded. The fuse box has elastic bands "tightening" the fuse holders and every one of it's metal parts is coated with crap and corrosion. Garbage.
I'm replacing the dash panel with a T3 style console which requires (again) different wiring. The new (non Guzzi) left and right handlebar switches are internally wired differently from the non originals that are on the bike, so many of the circuits will have to be changed- again. I will add a main relay as well as relays for switching the Low and High beams and for the dual Fiam horns. Rewire the start relay so all the current doesn't go through the start switch.
The plan: Scrap the harness, design and wire a whole new harness.
I started by drawing a schematic of every subsystem like this:



 
Then a poster board for the entire wiring diagram:




I took apart the original harness to reuse much of the wiring.




Another (bad) surprise: I tested the coils and found that one of the Dyna 3 ohm units has an open secondary- it's now a fine paperweight.



The worse part? Everyone sells these coils in PAIRS ONLY. Grumbling, I ordered two new 5 ohm coils. They will get less hot than the 3 ohm ones, and by passing fewer amps the electronics in the control module should run cooler too. Cooler electronics = longer life, in theory anyway.

I'm in the process of wiring. Notice the loop of Hulk-like thick red starter cable? Yes, it's (#4 gauge) overkill. This cable is made of hundreds of fine strands, making it so flexible that it's actually much easier to rout than the original cable. The lower resistance of the large diameter cable means more voltage gets to the starter motor. Plus it's a conversation starter for fellow nerds. To the left of the Ducati regulator/rectifier is a ground stud. Amazing how many things get grounded on a bike. Six wires go to this stud, not including the Ducati R/R , which is grounded directly to the engine.
I have three relays mounted on the fender: Main shut off, Low beam power, high beam power.



Labelling wires like these going to the ignition coils makes for easier troubleshooting: Future Bernie will thank me.




I'll post more as I progress...

[berniebee]

Got most of the under tank wiring done.  A little luck: A buddy of mine has a nice big molex connector kit box, with lots of pins and multiple sizes of male and female shells. I made up these molex connector pairs- for free!   All the wiring on the bike will remain loose and jumbled until I test it.




Ignition switch wired: Only two wires are needed right now, but I wired all four terminals for possible future use.




High tone and low tone Fiam horns roughly in place:




New automotive (blade style) fuse box has a single input fed by the main relay, so the only current though the ignition switch is the relay coil current.




Main harness is getting thick with wires!




New five ohm coils installed and primary wiring done.




A waterfall of colours, these wires are waiting while I figure out the fitting and wiring of LEDs in the console.

[berniebee]

The console is one of the trickiest parts to wire. First, I decided against using the stock bulb holders. They cost a small fortune. Instead I ordered cheap and bright LED #194 bulbs and cheap sockets for those. LED's are far brighter and should last a near lifetime.

I'm using this instrument panel:



It's made of two black plastic parts, top and bottom, with coloured lenses in between. The two black parts were not rigidly assembled..
Strengthened it with some epoxy:






Carved the holes round with an exacto knife and sanded the top (Ok bottom) surfaces for better adhesive grip.



I used these LED bulbs and sockets:



They come in red, blue and green and are SUPER bright. They are rated to be used with 12 Volts, but I used 1K ohm resistors to dim the Neutral, Hi beam and Park lights. Otherwise, they would be a little too distracting.
The bulbs fit the holes very snuggly, so I glued the sockets with hot glue. Just strong enough to keep them in place, but easy to scrape off if the LED's ever need to be replaced.



A nine pin Molex socket fits nicely in the (sort of) rectangular hole with only a bit of file work. The nine pins are enough for the eight lights plus a 12 volt wire. The ground wire will connect with a spade type connector to the grounds for the front signals and instrument lights. And the ground wire going back to the frame.



Also drilled a hole for the odometer reset cable. (Brass tube.) Took me a while to figure out how to line up the hole precisely with the reset shaft on the speedo.