A week ago I set out to give the wife's r65/80 a bit of a refresh - new timing chain, crank sprocket, outrigger bearing, new rings and fit the heads I bought 6 months ago and recently had re-furbished.
A simple task I thought, start Saturday lunch time and have it knocked over by lunch time Sunday and then go for a ride together on Monday.
Ha! The evil black forest elves saw me coming a long, long way away.
The first problem was that I could not get the header pipes out of the heads, could not budge them one iota, even using a very long piece of flat bar and more force that was really prudent - no way where they going to move.
OK soak in penetrating oil for a few hours and try again. First problem, I thought I would just carry on at the front end of the engine, but an artifact of recycling the original R65 pipes is that the balance pipe is way too close to the timing chest cover to allow removal of the cover. Ok twiddle thumbs for a while.
Sunday morning and the header pipes were unmoving. Damm, pull off the crash bars and run the grinder through the balance pipe, remove heads with headers attached.
Grumpy as all get out after that, so worked on my R65 which had a roadworthy inspection on Monday
Come Monday and the r65 passed inspection with flying colours and was duly registered, half a win is better than no win, so I went for a short ride alone.
Tuesday, I took the heads with pipes attached to my favorite engineering works and tasked them with removal of the pipes. They asked me what I had already done and after I told them they asked me what the hell I expected them to do. Gritting my teeth I gave them permission to destroy the heads to get the pipes out, sadly a pair of rebuildable R80 heads cost less than a pair of Staintune headers. Three hours and $110 later they had the pipes out, they had had to use the pedestal drill to drill through the heads until they hit the pipes, working their way inwards till they reached the end of the pipe, 10 seconds work with the air chisel removed enough casting so the pipes came free. Sad end to a nice set of heads that only needed new valves to be perfect, I had intended to either keep them and recycle them back onto the bike next time, or sell them to defray the costs of buying the pair of heads I imported from the USA and had rebuilt.
Thursday morning I ran around before work to buy some stainless tube to make a new balance pipe, couple of nice looking stainless clamps and 4 new 32t hacksaw blades so I could cut slits in the ends of the tubes using two blades side by side.
Saturday, cracked on and put the new rings in, followed the new heads, then started on the timing chain. In my distaste for changing crankshaft sprockets (which to my utter amazement went well) I had forgotten what a miserable pig of a job putting the joining link keeper on is. But eventually and with the aid of surgical forceps - it was on.
Below is a photo of my method of retaining the tensioner out of the way - quick and simple. I was seriously unimpressed with the quality of the new tensioner (fitted in photo), I seriously considered putting the only slightly marked original back in as it is far more robust, but then I realized that the design for the fixed tension has changed and you can't mix and match - the elves win again.
Knocked off at 4 o'clock and resumed this morning. Finished just on dark. 16 hours on task to do a job I thought 4 hours would pull up. A nice steak and a good Pinot Noir has the job of cheering me up this evening.
