Why I am building a "cheater" R65

[Tony Smith]

Reason the first - I can
Reason the second - because it will be fun

Explanation below:-

What is a "cheater" R65?

Answer - one that has been "improved" in ways that will be undetectable to those not seeped with the knowledge of Airheads.


How will it be a cheater?
Answer - In the "go" department it will have an 860cc kit, a hot cam to match the existing ported and flowed heads and an R75 final drive.

In the "stop" department it will have twin Brembos, yet to be determined whether these will be 2 or 4 spot (I have both).

In the "going round corners" department it will have K100RS forks fitted with cartridge emulators and a Tardozzi brace, the rear end will start with my existing Betors, but if I decide to lift the rear end a little that will change to Ikons.

The K100 front wheel means that I will have a 4.00*18 tyre front and rear, if I am successful having my LS rear wheel repaired they will look sufficiently similar to not rouse suspicion.alternatively I might simply convert to monolever rear end which would be a simple task and use a K75 final drive and wheel.


But why?
See above and- I belong to a local restorer's club and a number of the members have recently started using their
left-over parts from restorations to build cafe-racer Honda and Suzuki 750s. We go on fairly regular rides and it irks me that whilst the good old R65 will handle rings around a CB750 and can just about equal a GS750, they both run away from me up hills with their additional power.

The 860 kit and cam will close the power gap, actually I should be on level terms with the CB750 and at significantly less disadvantage to the Suzukis. The forks, brakes and bigger front tyre should put the R65 well ahead in the handling stakes.

And it will all look stock as a block. I am looking forward to their surprised looks.

[wilcom]

What is a "cheater" R65?

Tony. in the states that is known as a "sleeper",  a mundane ol' grandpa car with a fat motor when the chips are down.

You'll have them scratching their heads and going .......WTF?

[Julio A.]

Curious. I'm building the same engine with the 860cc and 324 cams. I don't plan on changing the final drive and tires though.

[Ed Miller]

Where did you get the 860 kit and hotter cam?

[Tony Smith]

Where did you get the 860 kit and hotter cam?

860cc kit from Siebenrock. The "hot" cam is one made by now deceased BMW guru Don Wilson. Don originally developed the cam to restore some performance to R100 series bikes which became progressively slower as the model rolled one, particularly from 1981 on. Anyway back in the 80s I was yarning with Don about the R65 and he said that he had tried one of his cams in an R65 and found that it worked well after some minor re-timing (relative to the cam gear, not ignition). It turned out he still had his "proof of concept" cam and hadn't sold it. I bought it and put it into stock, my thought at the time was to put a "standard" gear on it and use it in any Post 1981 R100 engine I ever found myself owning, but in one of the twists fate likes handing to us, it is actually going into an R65. Actually to call it a "hot" cam is a bit disingenuous, according to Don the lift and duration is only slightly "hotter" than the RS cam in the 77/78 model R100.

[Ed Miller]

Wow.  That's the same stroke as stock, right, just bigger bore?  I wonder how the vibration will be.

[Tony Smith]

Wow.  That's the same stroke as stock, right, just bigger bore?  I wonder how the vibration will be.

The beauty of the boxer engine is that provided that the pistons themselves are matched primary balance is perfect. The unbalanced "rocking couple" is a function of the weight of the rods - which is unchanged.

I am not expecting any serious increase in vibration at all. Time of course will tell, but in honour of the somewhat more "spirited" riding I plan for it, I will deleting the cone-couplers from the front engine bolt.

[wilcom]

I am not expecting any serious increase in vibration at all

Tony..........

What happened with the old adage , "if you want a faster bike, buy a faster bike". There were quite a few stories around about hot rodding the R65, most said DON"T DO IT! Metallic failures of  the disastrous kind would eventually happen if not sooner, eventually later.

Have the Siebenrock folks figured something out? What has changed from the old wisdom to now?

[Tony Smith]

Tony..........

What happened with the old adage , "if you want a faster bike, buy a faster bike". There were quite a few stories around about hot rodding the R65, most said DON"T DO IT! Metallic failures of  the disastrous kind would eventually happen if not sooner, eventually later.

Have the Siebenrock folks figured something out? What has changed from the old wisdom to now?

Yebbut, a faster bike wouldn't look like an R65. Courtesy of me taking the wife's R65/80 on a few runs they are alert to the extra power that has (it stitches up CB750s a treat).

I have heard the horror stories of what has happened in the past to people who fitted large bore kits to R65s. I strongly suspect that most of the problems fit into two areas of causation:-

1/. Fitting a big bore kit to an already worn engine - simply by watching the posts here you are aware of things like valve stem wear, cam chain wear etc. that innocents do not know about. In my case the engine was pretty much rebuilt less than 4,000 miles ago with all new bearings, new cam chain, new valves etc.

2/. People putting them together like "Meccano sets" - this is a hobby horse of mine. Compare the BMW boxer and something even more agricultural like say a VW 1600 boxer. BMW did all the hard engineering back at the factory and produced an engine that fits together precisely, you do not have to measure things like piston/cylinder deck height, combustion chamber volume etc when you assemble a BMW - the factory did it right, whereas with a VW every single component that bolts to another has to be measured, checked and "fitted". Please don't take this to mean that I don't check the assembly of a BMW, of course I do, but I can count the numbers of errors requiring "fitting" on the fingers of one hand  and I suspect most of them were induced by necessary machining long after manufacture. The "traditional" way to make up a big bore kit for an R65 is to use R100 or R90 pistons and a set of the appropriate barrels that have had their length machined to allow for the short stroke of the R65. I'm sure you can see the problem right there - who did the machining, how well was it done and were the barrels "fitted" on assembly?.

There are some things I like about the Siebenrock  kit - it uses their well proven R100 pistons and the barrels are correctly machined to exactly match the stock R65 barrels for length. What I don't like about the Siebenrock pistons is that I (and a lot of others)think that the squish band  is not appropriate for the stock R65 head - I am less concerned because mine already has bigger than stock valves and the combustion chambers are no longer true "hemi"heads.

That said however, if I run into pre-ignition I will simply fit decompression plates under the cylinders until I don't - this isn't a "race" engine so I will not be machining piston crowns  to alter squish band or compression.


There is no reason why the bottom end cannot cope with a substantial increase in capacity - the R65 has the same sized bearings/journals as any other boxer, the crank is made from the same grade of metal, the rods are made to the same standard and the same material as other boxers. So if you can turn an R60 into an R100 by swapping top ends, the R65 should be well within its safety limits.

Now, if I'm wrong and end up with egg on my face, I've had a bit of fun and I'll simply put a 1070 into it!

[wilcom]

1/. Fitting a big bore kit to an already worn engine

2/. People putting them together like "Meccano sets"


There is no reason why the bottom end cannot cope with a substantial increase in capacity

As always, great insight,

Thanks Tony

[tunnelrider]

Hi Tony, stoked to hear you're getting around to this, I reckon your plan is a good one and I'm looking forward to hearing how it goes with the increased 'cubes' and taller final drive. Are you still planning on fitting the taller 5th gear and 'hot' cam?  If so I'm curious - fitting the taller 5th gear means a tranny overhaul (well at least taking the PIA flange nut off, shafts out/in and reshimming the cover) and fitting the 'hot cam' means you'll be stripping the alternator, diode board, ATU etc to get into the timing chest - a lot more work than just doing the upgrade kit and final drive?!
But if she needs a bit of love then there's a good chance she'll cranking along for many years to come I guess for a few month's work...  (well it'd take me a few months at least).
Good stuff.

[Tony Smith]

Hi Tony, stoked to hear you're getting around to this,

Yeah, getting around to it is the problem. Last year I struck out on my own and commenced working from home - just the sort of thing sensible people do in their 60th year when they are thinking about winding down and retiring - start a new business. After a quiet start that is picking up and chewing into valuable "workshop time".

Warning - extended rant follows.

As an example of the "distractions", for some time we have been increasingly concerned at our rising overall energy costs, our combined electricity and gas bill has recently begun to nudge $1k per quarter, which we think for two people is getting a bit absurd. My working from home hasn't helped as there is an A/C unit running in my office, along with more computers and a couple of biggish printer/photocopier/scanner/fax machines so I can only see the situation getting worse from a consumption point of view. worse, energy costs are skyrocketing in Australia due to almost inspired miss-management on the part of Government  and as the electricity network ages without suitable replacement strategies in place, supply is becoming less reliable.

I recently watched a television show about the State of South Australia (who are in a somewhat worse position than we are in Queensland) and on that show was a proprietor of a metal casting firm who found that he had two problems - firstly continuity of supply and cost of supply. SA is so short of electricity that they run a "spot price" system for industry which essentially means that the supplier can charge punitive amounts for power to encourage industrial users to switch off. A metal foundry can't do that because if a furnance full of molten metal cools down you have written off a multi-million dollar  investment. The owner's response was to cover every square meter of his buildings' roofs with solar panels and installing a big diesel generator. Now his panes provide power for his offices and plant lighting and he uses the grid solely for the furnaces. A staff member has the job of monitoring electricity price in real time and if it passes a certain set level, turning on the diesel generator. Now, comments as to how a supposedly developed, 1st world country could get itself into this kind of $hit aside, I found myself wondering if there was a small scale solution I could employ.

My solution is to put 15kw worth of photo voltaic panels on the roof backed up by two 5kw inverters and 25kw/h worth of batteries. One of the inverters is an "export limited" device which will export up to 5kw/h of power per day to the grid, selling our electricity to the power company. We receive a positively paltry feed-in tariff for this, but it should just about cover our basic costs of maintaining a connection to the grid for the days that the sun doesn't shine and our costs of grid electricity used on those days.

The second inverter has a battery management unit built in and handles charging 2 of the four batteries, it can also operate as a 2kw emergency power supply so if the grid goes down, we still have power. A third device is simply a battery management device and takes a DC feed from 5kw worth of the roof panels and charges the other two batteries.

Now this is where it gets tricky.

If, (really when considering where we live in cyclone alley) the power goes off, we still have all the power we need. Although the hybrid inverter in EPS mode only supplies 2kw, it replaces the grid supply to our house and provides a synchronization source for the second inverter which can then supply its full 5kw drawing from either the roof panels or from batteries as required. I reckon that 7kw total is more than enough to handle the necessities of life like A/C at night, lights, television and a computer or two. If the grid stays down and we have more than a couple of overcast days we still have our existing generator which can supply the house with power and charge the batteries through the battery management subsystems so we will not have to have the generator droning away at night.

Now, given that this is a near grid-Independence system it is somewhat of an overkill for a house in a suburban area, I am essentially betting on three things - firstly that grid electricity costs will continue to rise rapidly, that the feed-in tariff will become closer to the "buy tariff" (it currently costs me $0.28 per kilowatt/hour to buy and the "magnanimous" feed-in tariff is $0.12 per kilowatt/hour. Secondly that our overall grid supply will become less reliable than it already is - which seems a no-brainer given the current trajectory And thirdly that I've done my sums right.

This rant continues in next post.

[Tony Smith]

This is a continuation of my "sub-rant" on electricity

If I've done my sums right then the total install cost (less the generator that we already owned) will be "neutralized" by energy bills we have not paid in approximately 7 years.

By 10 years the batteries will (providing LG don't tell huge porkies) be reaching the end of their useful lives, at which point I expect that replacements will cost a mere fraction of the current buy price. The inverters, BMS, auto-contactors and panels should all have a useful life of around 25 years. If I am still above ground in my mid 80s I doubt that I or we will still be here (high set home) and hopefully whoever has bought the place from us in the 25 year period will have paid a premium to buy a house that is largely "off-grid".

Now, there are various rules and regulations that you have to comply with to do all of the stuff outlines in my previous post. Worse, the electricity supplier gets to largely make sits own rules as to how you get to connect to "their" grid.

That was the bit that took all my time (remember this was a rant about time "distractions").

Initially I was laughed at by the people at the supplier/regulator and told to "go away". That was like a red rag to a bull of course......

Eventually, when I evaluated all of the regulations and then searched the world for devices that would do what I want to do (and which were approved by the rule-maker) I resubmitted my proposal, along with a VERY long commentary explaining why and how my proposal fitted their regulations. After 4 weeks they grudgingly admitted I was right, thereby learning an important lesson - don't mess with a lawyer who a long, long time ago was also an electrician.

The equipment is all ordered and I expect that my contractor will be here in about 3 weeks to complete the installation - photos and probably another rant will follow then.

Oh, in the past 2 weeks the KLE's forks started leaking so I fitted new seals which was a saga in itself - what a stupidly designed fork leg they are - you cannot replace a seals and dust caps without a full strip of the forks which includes replacing a guide bush that gets destroyed when you pull the forks apart, and when you have done all that you have to take the staunchions out so that you can use a seal driver to drive in the new inner bush, seal and dust caps.

Don't even get me started on the lunacy of running a damping system where the fluid level is permanently above the seal, or what Kawasaki did to make the bloody forks - staunchions from the KLR650, sliders from the BR250, springs from one of the road bikes and 6" galvanized iron pipe spacers fitted ex-factory. What a bamboozle of a system. Oh, and the big K couldn't be bothered up-rating the damper rods, so they specify an obscure 10wt Kayaba fork oil that has a viscosity of 37.5 centistokes (near as dammit to a 80/20 mix of Castrol fork 15 and fork 10, and let me tell you Castrol fork 15 does a good imitation of honey pouring form the bottle)  so getting the seals and bushes needed and borrowing a 42mm seal driver took a while.

Oh yes....I bought a K100RS project for my idle hours.

Are you still planning on fitting the taller 5th gear and 'hot' cam? 

Not fitting the taller gear at first instance. Courtesy of Wilcom I have a R75 final drive which I've now fully rebuilt with new bearings and seals and re-shimmed - an exercise that involved buying $100 worth of parts and $200 worth of special tools. suffice it to say that fully stripping a final drive is not for the ill-equipped or faint of heart. Fortunately a job with long intervals. I bought the special tools because the R65/80 and the R100 will all need final drive rebuilds over the next little while, and the kit of tools includes the bits so that it will also work on K-bikes.

[Justin B.]

I have about 9 KW of panels and it pretty much supplies all I use once it's averaged out.  The electric company I use "banks" my excess and during days when I use more than I produce I "draw" from what I have banked.  My largest electric bill last year was a little over $2 and that was all tax.

[Tony Smith]

I have about 9 KW of panels and it pretty much supplies all I use once it's averaged out.  The electric company I use "banks" my excess and during days when I use more than I produce I "draw" from what I have banked.  My largest electric bill last year was a little over $2 and that was all tax.

Now that is a sensible and user friendly system. Our supplier/regulator here is neither.

I could have done what I initially wanted to do with one Fronius inverter and two Tesla 2 Powerwalls. Tesla make it hard because you cannot DC feed their system which means not only do you need more inverters, you also lose a bit on the DC-AC-DC-AC conversion. Tesla was attractive to me because they already had all the approvals needed and they supply their full 5kw output rather than a reduced "emergency power supply" amount when the grid goes down.

But "no" said my supplier, "thous shalt not connect more than two grid tied inverters to our grid on a single phase supply". I did briefly consider going 3-phase which would have stuffed that argument, but it would have cost me around $2k to do so, assuming I came out of retirement ad did the switchboard re-wiring myself. Seeing as the last real electrical work I did was in 1990 when we built this place I decided that the possibility of making an error was too high and abandoned the idea of 3-phase power.

The solution is one Solax hybrid inverter - it has a Battery management system and an "emergency power supply" system inbuilt. The second inverter is also a Solax simply to keep the amount of software I need to get across to a minimum (plus they have ethernet ports which I prefer to WiFi for this), this inverter has no BMS, but can export to the grid and has a way of limiting export - as the supplier will only pay me for 5kw/h per day I decline to give them any for free. The last two boxes are by Tigo -the first is a smart DC-DC converters fitted to every panel and connected by way of their own network using the DC power rails. We have significant shading problems so the Dc-DC converters are needed to maintain voltage at the expense of amps so that a whole string of panels do not drop their bundle just because one or two of them are shaded. Also the clever controller can switch strings of panels to the area of most need - charging batteries, own consumption or export as needed.

The last box is also by Tigo and is simply a battery management system. We will be using it to feed our second pair of LG CHEM 6.1kw/h batteries, although it can in fact charge up to 8 batteries - maybe if Lithium battery prices go the way I expect over the next couple of year we might install more batteries and disconnect entirely from the grid.

15kw of panels may look excessive at first glance, but the panels are the cheapest part of the whole equation - we have some shading at different times of the day and some of our panel strings will receive more sunlight than others at different times of the day. Whilst we will never reach the theoretical total output of 60kw/h per day, I'm comfortable that we will nudge the mid-30s often enough so that we will have full battery charge by mid afternoon and 5kw/h export to the grid and that the "oversupply" will give some robustness to any increased shading, bird cr@p, leaves and age related degradation of the panels.

Time, as they say, will tell.

My aim is to never get an electricity bill again. We will see how I go.