Spares: Motor Reflection

Unboxed the new $40 top end from eBay and found a real gem in an excellent condition, standard size cylinder.  Sometimes lucky, sometimes unlucky with these spare parts.  Guess it all evens out.  The clutch cable I just bought for $13 had the right part number for the early 40" cable, but turned out to be the 44" version.  Go figure.

Didn't really do anything specific besides lay out all the spare engine parts to mull them over and soak it all in again.

The #1 crankshaft from the old "Complete Late Bottom" is distinguished by having a clutch guide that's frozen in place and neither bearing is all that great.

The #2 crankshaft has one excellent bearing and one that's pretty rough.  The flywheels also have holes in them, so that's an easy way to distinguish the Early crank.

Too bad the bearings are not easily replaced (easy to remove with a tool, but hard to get new ones in with a multi-ton press, or so Clymer says).

Con-rod to flywheel clearance was good on both, too.  Crank #1 = .279mm.  Crank #2 = .406mm.

Also unboxed the new hub, which was very clean and fresh.  Combined with new spokes it would make a good "model" wheel to practice truing.  Just need a really clean rim, which I don't currently have.

The top end also came with a head cover and points base plate in dirty but otherwise good condition.

Spares: Late Clutch (Finally) Disassembled

Can't believe it took this long to finally get the clutch from the Late Bottom End apart.  I got stymied a few times trying to get the damper springs out first, which was completely the wrong thing to do.  It's a little mechanical hubris in not going back to Clymer's to refresh my memory on the procedure.

The first thing I needed to do was compress the clutch, then remove the clip, then remove the springs.

Go figure.

But the even bigger revelation came when I realized that Viola's clutch was NOT an S90 clutch after all.  I had always thought this Late spare clutch was the oddity, not having the screws I was familiar with.  All the while, it turns out Viola's clutch was actually a centrifugal type.  How did I keep missing that fact in the book?

Turns out the true S90 manual clutch is ten times simpler than the centrifugal version, as you'd expect.  You compress it, remove the clip, pop out 2 friction plates and 2 steel plates and you're done.  I also used 2 sockets (chrome 21mm, black 29mm) on the ends of the compressor tool (instead of a wrench placed crosswise like I used to) which made things even easier.

Finally, when measuring the friction plates, I found they were 2.92mm and since the standard is 2.8-2.9, it means they must be brand new.  The springs were also good at 26.6 (with 26mm wear limit).

Spares: Early Engine Cleaning, Part II

Full frontal assault on the Early crankcase.

Spares: Big Cleaning on Early Case

Took a first pass with the heavy bristle and parts brush.  Engine foam, scrub, rinse, repeat.

Little better, but still a long way to go...