Cogs are in...

Got these yesterday in the mail.  Biggest sprockets I've ever seen, 18/45.  Chain conversion is gonna happen.  Tomorrow I hope to start slapping the motor back together. 

 

The goods are all in, new piston, pin and gaskets.  Check out the lavish, wholly impractical bling velocity stack below.  I'm investigating getting a K&N or Uni filter to angle out slightly to the side.  Those velocity stacks were only $34 shipped from Steel Dragon Perfomance.  They are polished with excellent finish work.  I'm curious to see how the whole system works with the Supertrapp, stack vs filter etc.  The stack is really just for fun, any real distance and I'll have the filter on.  It's a piece of piss to change them out with a simple, accessible, single piston motor.  

Saturday and Sunday are gonna be big engine assembly days.   I have to finish cleaning off all the gasket and seal and the kit should be ready to be IN-STALLED.   I like the way the carb makes my apartment smell like a garage.

Supertrapp finish problem solved hopefully.  Paint guy Ed at the NAPA on Evergreen Way in Everett recommended I try this stuff.   If it can take 500 degrees, it should be okay.   Something to do tomorrow anyway until the piston and piston pin arrive.   "The waiting is the hardest part..."

Tires getting ordered tomorrow, ouch, that mounting cost aint cheap.  If I could mount and balance them myself, I could save almost $100 by getting the tires online.  I'll get mine through this good guy who does great work, SSU in Everett, WA.  The price of a project...













And a shot of pure '70's biking love:

The Supertrapp cleaned up nicely after a few hours of hand sanding.  There are some gouges on it, but, this is not a show bike.  A piece of heavy pipe popped the insert right out.  Just need to repack it and get some kind of chemical conversion coating on the bare aluminum to give it some corrosion resistance.  I don't think a clear coat will take the heat.  Any ideas??  Looking for Alodine 1200 now. 

Here's a good shot of the aft-most engine mount and swingarm pivot spindle.  This needs to be relocated a half inch or so lower.

The poor little frame is left hangin' in the breeze for now.

It all begins now...

I bought a 1998 Suzuki Savage, LS650 cruiser bike to modify into a fun-around-town street tracker.  After a lifelong desire for a simple, self-built machine and a few life-changing events,  my 139hp Aprilia Tuono just isn't necessary.  It's for sale.

I borrowed a truck and drove on the darkest, stormiest, foggiest, most miserable night to the back of beyond Tacoma to pick up this nice condition, but, foul running Savage.  I wish that was my truck.

The bike had a loud knocking sound so I drained the oil, cleaned the carb, checked the cam chain tensioner and filled her back up and, bang bang bang, problem still there.  I bought a used Supertrapp before I even got the bike running well, a little over excited...   Some cleaning up and she'll be sweet, tune-able and LOUD.





I did the cam chain tensioner weld-extension from the suzukisavage.com forum.  Or Jon did that is.  Great idea, easy to do.  Pic later.

Jon (Jon rhymes with stone), is the Icelandic Mechanic.  An old friend I enlisted the help of.  He runs an old school machine shop doing everything and anything for the commercial fishing fleet down near Fisherman's Terminal.  Jon loaned me a boroscope which I was able to get into the spark plug hole and have a rough glimpse at the cylinder.  It looked like I had a burnt valve so I decided to open up the motor.  Turned out to be bad lighting in the boroscope.  Oh well, she's out of the frame now. 

I didn't make a lot of friends in my apartment building tearing it apart in our underground garage.  I did get a great workout carrying that motor to my storage locker though. 


The head and the cylinder both looked pretty good.  A few scratches in the bore, and Jon pointed out some slight oxidation circumferentially just above the piston on the right in the photo below.  Says it sat for a while.  The scratches on the piston top are from my screwdriver trying to find TDC through the spark plug hole adjusting the valves, duh.  No harm done.
 

While doing the tearing apart at my apartment, I was also cycling to Jon's for some bead blasting.  Here's a pic of Jon giving me a pointer, a few airplane cylinders in the background.  It worked a treat, the tank came out looking brand new. 

 I also used an air motor and a cutting disc to zip through the spokes like a hot knife through warm buttermilk.  I got that tank and hub in a box and cycled it back home.   Ready to be mailed to RYCA, where they will chop and drop the gas tank and mount an 18" rim to the hub, which had a 16" rim.   I love my parts-delivery bike, ha ha.  I got it for a song, had a mate with all the parts I was missing and now rock around on a 1969 Sears 3-speed.  Complete with the leather saddle bags that came with my Savage and the Adam-12 paint job.  Cycle racing days on  hold pending knee surgery. 

 













 One of the things I want to do is put a chain on it.   The standard bike is a belt drive.  Convenient I guess, but, no old school feel and choice of gearing.  With the bigger tire I'll have on it, the gearing will get WAY tall, so a chain drive with sprockets is a must.  However, the swingarm pivot spindle ends up being too low after the rear end is effectively raised by installing the longer RYCA shocks. That makes a chain almost lay on the swingarm and most definitely slap it while riding around.  So a workmate mentioned cutting the axle lugs and welding them back on lower, Jon said, "Sure, is easy." 

Stuff finally arrived at RYCA Saturday the 10th, they said it should ship back in 2-4 weeks.  Breath held...

Another gorgeous day in Seattle.

So another workmate with some machine guages offered to help me check the specs of the bore, piston etc.  Thus far, no smoking guns as far as the engine knock, until...

Ok, so this is no reason for a knock, but, something caused scoring/gouging on my piston pin, piston pin bore and the rod.  Jon reckons it overheated, the aluminum piston expanded more than the steel and it finally smeared metal.  You can see the  scoring in the piston bore in the 2nd photo below:

 That's some ugly smeared metal. 

 And it filtered into the rod bore and gouged that.  So my options are A) slap it back together as is, B) split the cases and change the rod, piston and pin, or C), replace the piston/pin and blend out the rod gouge and slap it back together.  Voila, there is no way I'm splitting the cases and I can source a new motor for relatively cheap if this blows up.  Piston and pin on order from Suzuki.  The dimensions were all in spec BTW, as verified by Jon.  The rod seems to be solidly on the crank too, so we're hoping the knocking was just the cam chain slapping.  It was loosish, the plunger over .6" out.


If you ever wondered what rocket scientists do at work, now you know --------------->>>>>>>>
This guy actually is a rocket scientist, and not half bad at staple, paperclip, tack, mechanical pencil sculpture.  Maybe it's coz he used to race MX in the Pro class.