BB July 3

The shock absorbers arrived on the Saturday, which was good timing. The
daughter of a family friend was 16 and was going out to lunch with her family.
She had been hankering after a ride, so we arranged secretly that I would take
her there. Of course, not having suspension was an issue, so I had about an hour
to swap the two shocks, which was easily accomplished as access is so good and
there aren't springs to compress first. The ride out was really successful,
however on arriving at the restaurant, a tabler spotted me (it's hard to hide in
this car) driving into an expensive restaurant with a young, attractive blonde -
oh the tongues were wagging.

Having got suspension, we've used it quite a lot - if the weather is good, the tin-
top has stayed on the drive

Having done a few miles, I wanted to check that the rocker pedestal/head/barrel nuts had not slackened, so duly
removed the rocker covers. The one nut that wouldn't torque up properly was now finger tight, so there was nothing
for it but to remove the head and barrel and see what was causing the problem. On this car, that takes less than 10
minutes, but having got there, I found a mess. I had asked about the problem on the MotoBins forum, and they
suspected the stud had stripped.

There is a known weakness on these engines that the long cylinder studs can strip out of the block if abused, and
this had obviously happened at some point in the past. The problem was that whoever had fixed it was a complete
muppet. They had inserted a helicoil, which is like a specially made spring that creates a thread of a known pitch in
a specially tapped hole. This is the proper fix for the problem, expect that they had drilled the hole too wide
before tapping it, the helicoil was too short and the "tang", which is supposed to be removed after installation, was
left in place. This effectively left a short, weak fixing, and when the nut was torques up, it just stripped out the
whole lot.

This left me with a large hole (too large to tap to M12), and a larger problem. Option were a) use "liquid metal" b)
tap the hole at M14 and get a special stud made up c) use somethimg like a keensert or d) buy a new short engine.

After lots of humming and hawing I decided that I wanted the car for the summer and that longer term fixes could
wait until the winter, so I'd start with liquid metal which is non destructive, and if that didn't work I could drill it
out and try the other options.

So, after carefully masking the other holes (as well as the back of this hole which goes into the block) JB Weld was
made up and the fix was made. We will see this evening whether it has worked or not.

I left the JB Weld to cure for 24hrs and then re-assembled the barrel and head. I only torqued up the bolt
lightly at first as I had been told that JB Weld actually needs more than 24hrs to fully cure. the idea was
therefore to get the engine working again and use the heat that gebnerated to really solidify it. This seemed to
work - then engine ran fine although I have still to go back and finally torque up the nut fully.

Next job was to give the car a good polish - lots of elbow grease, but it is getting easier each time that I do it.
Of course, I needed to give the car a "test run", also known as a n excuse to go to a local country pub. On the
way, my wife drove so that I could man the video camera. You can see the results here (760Kb MPEG 4 file) and
here (1Mb MPEG 4 file)

Since the last update, it has all gone pear shaped. I drove it on Thursday and when I pulled into the garage the
engine sounded very tappety on the nearside. Upon removing the rocker cover on Friday it was clear that the stud
had pulled out again. That blew away any chance of getting to the Uxbridge show :-(

This is bloody annoying. The stud is the lower inlet side and access isn't the best. I tried an M12 tap, but the hole
is already too wide to get decently deep threads so that blows away the idea of getting a stud made up with M12 at
one end. M14 is an option, although drilling out a hole that is already nearly 12 to 12.8 will be challenging without
stripping and removing the block. It seems, however, that this is what I will have to do.

I raised the issue on the Motobins forum and they suggested a Keensert. This is the next step up from a helicoil,
essentially it is a solid tube with the required thread inside (in this case M10 x 1.5) and a thread outside (again, in
this case M14 x 1.5), so you drill and tap to the outer thread and then screw in the insert. The insert has some pegs
that knock down and lock the insert in place to stop it moving when the inner thread is used. For more details click
here.

The kit (drill, tap, 5 inserts) is around �50 when postage and VAT is added, and as I aready have the taps, I've
ordered 5 inserts (minimum order) and I'll get hold of a 12.8 drill. I'll let you know how I get on. Of course, if I
screw it up then it is bye bye crankcase and I'll be in the market for a new short engine. No pressure, then.

I am so p*****d off. Today the keenserts arrived, so, thinks I, I have a drill, tap amd
inserts so I can get started. First thing to do was remove the wheel and then block up the
orifices with rags and paper, after which I carefully drilled out the hole. The tapping
drill is a 12.8, but taking advice a hand drill won't make a perfect hole, so I bought a new
12mm drill on the basis that it is better to be too small than too large.

The picture to the right shows the problem area. the big black circle is the top of the
piston, and to top right and bottom left you can see two of the four studs. The two large
holes below the piston are where the pushrod tubes meet the block in which are the cam
followers and at the bottom are the drain holes for oil running back to the sump from the
head down the pushrod tubes. The problem hole is to the bottom right of the piston.

The drill was wrapped in masking tape so that I new what depth to drill to and away we went. This was the bit I
was dreading, but it went easily. I was taking all of this very carefully sop just before starting to tap the hole, I
checked the tap against the keensert (having already checked the stud) and the threads were different. When I
bought the taps at the weekend I asked for 14 x 1.5, what they gave me was 14 x 1.75. So that brought
proceedings to a grinding halt. Of course, this proves the benefit of checking everything before starting. Imagine
if I had not checked before tapping the hole..........

After a false start, the M14 tap arrived today, so I went down to Scotty's to get it. Having drilled out the hole,
all I had to do was tap it, but of course these things are never that simple. My tap handle wasn't big enough so I
had to make up a tommy bar out of a bit of flat steel first. Tapping the hole was easy although it takes acre to
get it straight. After a bit of faffing about, the insert went in and the loccking tabs were knocked down.

Of course, it is never that simple. Getting the barrel over the rings is a bit of a pain and you will end up with
sliced fingers from the sharp ring edges (does anyone know what the effect of blood on the lubrication and
cooling properties of oil is?), and in the process I fractured a section of the oil control ring. Of couse I have
loads of spares, but no rings, and by this time it was 12:30 so no chance of getting another today

So a call to Motobins ordered another one along with a new oil filter. I don't think I got any swarf in the block
as I was very careful, but discretion is the better part of valour.

What a beautiful sound, the sound of a boxer twin ticking over! The oil control ring arrived so wityh far less
muppetry this time I fitted it and re-assembled the barrel and head. This time I was very careful about doing up
the head nuts, but all of them torqued up properly, so it would seem that I have resolved that problem.

Of course, although I had been very careful about stopping swarf and other debris getting into the engine, I
drained the oil, dropped the sump off and claned it out, and whilst it was out I could look up into the block and
make sure there wasn't anything else in there. Change the oil filter and then, re-assemble and then the normal
starting procedure for an engine that has been drained of oil. And it started first time.

Last job for the night was to make up and fit some new number plate brackets from steel, the originals were ali
and had snapped.

So, we're back on the road - if only fixing the weather was as simple!!!