She Lives!
I just got back from a short trip to brazil saturday and I was itching to get back to the two girls in my life, Takami and Suzie.
Takami gave me a hand and we started wrenching away. After synchronizing the carbs and the oil pump (easy enough), we installed the instrument cluster. Connecting all the electrical connectors was simpler than I expected. I usually dread any electrical work but with the help of Takami and the wiring diagram this went smooth and we didn’t even blow a fuse.
Last came the gas tank and fuel line. After a few mishaps like installing the petcock backwards, i siphoned some gas from the harley and she was ready to go.
She started after 3 kicks! I was pretty impressed considering I have not yet done a proper ignition timing.
The smell, the sound… A thing of beauty!
I have to baby those new pistons for a while but I can tell the engine feels strong and runs smooth.
Now I have to get her plated and insured and take her out for a ride 😀
Yikes!
That was easy!
Petcock installed backwards...
You can almost smell it
Smells like spring
I may be a optimist but the temperature has soared from around -20 to a balmy -2 and that gives me the bike itch. I had not done much to suzy lately so I got buzy again.
First off I finally cleaned up and rebuild the carbs. There was a spectacular amount of waxy crud left from the metal shop. It took quite a bit of carb cleaner, WD 40, compressed air and Qtips to get everything nice an clean. But here we are I have complete carbs with new adjusted floats, new gaskets and hopefuly clean innards.
Carb bowl crud
Airscrew crud
Venturi dirt
Stuff that came off the carbs
Finally done
Next came the cylinders and head. There was quite a bit of polishing stuff left in the transfers ports. I also had some caked on gasket bits to cleanup. I am a firm believer of using the kitchen sink for mechanical cleanup and got everything out with carb cleaner and a toothbrush. Once cleaned and rinsed, I dosed everything in wd 40 to displace the water and put in the oven at 105 to make sure all the water is gone. I am left with clean parts lightly coated in oil so that they don’t rust. I feel like the Martha Stewart of engines.
Yuck
More yuck
Messy job
Bake 10 min at 105C
Tada!
As soon as I get an above freezing day I start to bolt things back on.
Carb rebuild part one
Today I went to the motorcycle supershow in toronto, saw lots of bike stuff and that got me all edgy to get my hands dirty. I decided that finaly, I would rebuild the carbs. I have a whole bunch of small tidbits to assemble but it should be a breeze.
One touchy parts is the floats. The old floats were dented, cracked and generally old wich may explain why the bike ran kinda rough. I got new floats and proceeded to adjust the height as per the manual.
Now interestingly, I noticed that the old floats were not adjusted correctly. In fact they were not adjusted at all. The adjustment tab was flat. This is the way the tab is on a new float, pre-adjustment. I double checked and indeed once correctly adjusted, the tab should look bent. I suppose at some point in the past someone replaced the floats, never bother to adjust them and the bike never ran well.
It take a while to get it right but eventualy I got the height set within tolerance.
After that I started putting all the screw thingies like the air screw and the idle screw. Problem! All the small cavities , threads and channels are gummed up with polishing wax and super fine metal dust. I tried to clean them with Q-tips and blowing air but that stuff is very waxy. I need to stop here and get a chemical carb dip to get everything out. Oh well at leat it looks nice for now.
Ready to go
Easy to loose stuff
Old float dingged and cracked
Old float tab, flat, never adjusted
New float with adjusted tab
By the book
The book
Nice must need to be taken apart and cleaned
News from the shine men
Ok so this morning I went to the polishing depot to shoot some video and take a bunch of pictures as they work on the last of my parts. I went there for 7:00 Am saturday morning wich is pretty early even by my standards. These guys are hard core and start typicaly between 4 and 5. The shoot went great and I have about 20 minutes of good footage that I now need to edit. I also took a series of stills. See below for the work in progress. The carburetors are going to look spectacular. Seeing the before and after, it’s hard to believe I was looking at the same pieces.
Click on images for hirez.
Carb Soup
I decided to give the carbs a thorough cleaning.
They clearly have been cleaned recently but not squeaky clean. I decided to go with the old boiling technique. Basically I took everything apart, put aside the rubber bits (orings and such) and boil everything else for about half hour in a mild acid solution. I din’t have any vinegar or lemon juice so I added about half a cup of this bathroom cleaning spray that has acid in it to dissolve lime. Base on the colour of the water after about 15 minutes, this works quite well. The carbs came out very clean but super dull looking. I pick up some polishing bits for my dremel and will give it a try this weekend. I also ordered some new floats from Suzuki canada as one of them is in fact cracked and leaks.
Before the boil, not super clean
Lots of bits
ready to go; clean liquid
Half hour later, nasty stuff
All clean, just waiting for new floats
Top end comes off
So today I decided to take the top end off. I want to get the head and cylinder cleaned up as there is a lot of surface corrosion on the alloy.
Last known picture of the top end intact
First I took off the carbs. The rubber boots are harder than Chinese algebra and will be replaced. I cheked inside the carbs. Looks OK. They have been cleaned and rebuilt recently. However the metal floats have been crushed a bit. I may look for better ones.
Carb bowl. Looks like it was cleaned recently
Dinged up float
Then the head came off followed by the cylinders. This took some time with 24 nuts that are not always easy to reach and some tiny and very tight hoses for oil recirculation. The head is in perfect shape but I wish I could say the same about the pistons and barrels.
The cyclinder barrels are scored and a bit rusty, surface only damage so rebore should not be required, rehoning should do. The cyclinders are already at 0.5 oversize so they have been bored up in the past. The pistons look mighty bad. The center one in particular has some nasty seizure mark. This is beyond cleaning but I found some new pistons on ebay from japan.
Taking the pin off the piston was a bitch. I had to rig an extractor using a bearing puller to get it out.
Serious seizure scoring on the center piston
Carb synchronisation
During teardown, I checked if the carbs were synced and they are way off. The right carb opens before the other two by a nice margin. Must remember to adjust this once I learn how to do it.
Yan's GT380 
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