Let's get this show on the road

When I said "Why didn't ONE of you bastards advise me to take the engine out?" what I meant was "ALL you bastards advised me to take the engine out !!" Moral of the tale? When everyone offers the same good advice then bloody well take it. Lesson learned.

Reading the advice on recutting valve seats, okay I get the concept, overzealous cutting results in the valve sitting too deep in the head and therefore results in an inability to set the correct cam clearance even with the thinnest shim.

Looking at the cam-followers and shims there appears to be sufficient 'meat' on these to allow them to be re-faced with an oil-stone which could give an extra few thou of clearance if it's close to the limits.

Not planning to do this, just wondering if it's a method that's been tried?? Re-facing the Stellite tips on worn Triumph cam-followers is standard practice....... but then there's a damn good thickness of Stellite to work with so I guess it depends on the thickness of the case hardened layer on the Lav parts.
 
Have you removed the valves from the head and checked the condition of guides, seats and valve faces yet?  If not, then I reckon you're getting ahead of yourself when talking about re-cutting the valve seats.

If the engine hasn't done a gazillion miles since it was built, then the valves, seats and guides should be OK to re-use. They may only need cleaning and lapping in with a bit of fine grinding paste to clean any rust off the seats/faces. Clean any traces of rust off the stems while you're at it.

I understood your intention was to re-commission a good engine that hadn't been running for a while, not to rebuild a buggered engine. Are you losing control of the scope of work?  :D
 
Hi Dellortoman, yep like I said when this whole saga began, when I start a project I have to work hard to fight off the tendency to 'blue-print' the engine. As it happens head is off and cleaned and valve seats are looking okay; nothing that a bit of lapping won't fix.

My question about refacing the tappets and/or shims was just a bit of theoretical pipe-dreaming. There'd been mention of problems with cam clearance due to valve seat re-cutting and simply wondered if this had been used as a work-around. I noticed last night that Andy Wagner was selling reconditioned tappets and, by the measurements he quoted, it sounds as if he's had them ground down to reface them. 
 
Tappets? ??? ???


Yes, you can grind the shims down on an oilstone easily enough but I understand they're prone to disintegrating below 1.2mm or thereabouts...
 
Phil,

A quick rub on a flat plate and emery will usually clean the tappets/buckets up nicely.  At least they will look nice, not really convinced of the need to "clean" them up as long as the top face is still flat.  Real wear only sets in at quite high mileages.

Stock thickness is 2.2mm, refaced tappets have been known to fail.  AW removes 0.4mm, a bit too much imho.  Easier and safer to tip the valve stems if more clearance for thicker shims is required.  Not perfect, but an acceptable bodge for an old engine on its last legs.

piet
 
Phil
Whilst you have the barrels off make sure that the stud holes are very clean and dry and when you refit the barrel that you don't get any debris into them. Then also make sure that the threads on the studs are clean ... a light and I mean light smear of oil when you refit them and then when refitting them be patient and don't force so try to wind in as far as you can by hand and you should be fine.
Remember as others have advised don't overtighten them or the head bolts...

By the way exhaust valves on RGS are standard 35mm.............so as you also 39.5 inlet that tells me stock in that area.
What pistons were fitted the standard ?
As per Red check the rings in the pistons for side play.
 
Yep I thought the buckets AW had 'renovated' were a wee bit too far at 0.4 mm. Considering the stress on these components I'd have gone for half that margin at a max.

Pistons are 10:1 on a standard bore. Picked the barrel up this morning after rehoning and they're fine apart from some very slight corrosion staining on the RHS bore at the very top in the squish area, not too concerned about this as it's not in the swept area of the bore and there's no noticable pitting. Im digging out my internal micrometer tomorrow to check the wear, fingers crossed it's well within the limits. Pistons are looking good, the lands have been measured and they're like new

Also picked up the Brembo P4s today. In pretty good (used) condition but I'll be wanting to do a full service before putting them on the bike. Pistons are working well, pushed one in with my finger and got an eyeful of brake fluid from the banjo......that'll teach me  :-[. Found the 65mm mounts on Bevel Heaven (thanks Reggie) at $150 but then found the same at Guzzi Power for $95, they look the same quality- and finish-wise, anyone have any experience of them?? I'll take a $55 saving if they're just as good !! No UK or European suppliers for these??

So I'm on the hunt for a service kit for the P4s, all seals, bleed nipples and caps, banjos and crush washers. Basically everything apart from the castings and springs, I'll take new pins and R-clips too. Who can help? Piet?

Oh yeah and I'm taking my torque wrenches down to the engineering dept. at the uni tomorrow to get them calibrated. You lot have scared the shit out of me regarding tightening these studs :o
 
That's why I let Pro's do the valve clearance adjustment on my bikes, I have seen to many studs pulled... If you are lucky, it's just the short ones, but if not - bugger...

 
Yeah, I gotta say the quality of the Lav alloy isn't up to the standards of other marques. I noticed when I was polishing the footrest plates that I was coming across pits and cavities within the alloy as I was polishing the scratches out. Poor grade alloy and no inserts is just begging for trouble.
The all alloy BSA competition engines, such as the Goldstar, used bloody great big phosphor bronze inserts in the weak point in the cylinder head to prevent the threads being pulled. I used to have a BSA ZB32 competition bike that I used for scrambling on my mates farm, that head was on and off umpteen times without any problem and because of the design of the pillar bolts you couldn't use a torque wrench so we'd just tighten the head up as hard as we could !!
 
If your taking about the rear set mounts,anyone could have made them,there a pretty basic casting,bubbles were the last issue with mine I was worried about, mounting holes miles out of square causing the pegs to bind when pivoting, whoever made mine must have been blind drunk when machining them. My engine stud issue was the dumb barstad who put them in upside down,not helped by the wrong  toque figures in the green book. Thats 80% against it to begin with, add lots of ham fisted DPOs over 30 years, done right with remedial repairs and its not a problem. Maybe we should have a sticky listing this stuff for new owners who haven't run into the usual .Doing searches and asking questions should highlight anything you need to know, its really rare something new comes up after thousands of posts.
 
I was of the opinion the alloy was pretty good quality, a few casting flaws perhaps but maybe I'm wrong.
I bought a Laverda because of my underwhelming experiences with British bikes to be honest, I have never seen such badly made dross as the Triumph and Norton factories were churning out in the seventies.
Oh yes forgot to say.....yes I did spend my hard earned(?) cash on Brit stuff in those days.
 
My experience was with the rear-set mounts. A lot of cavities appearing as I polished them but, as Vince said, this isn't uncommon and may not be representative of the alloy in the casings. 
 
Hey Vince, are you referring to the Tarozzi rearset mounting plates that fit the 180s? I agree that they're not the best castings I've seen, though they're good enough to do the job. If yours are drilled crooked, it shouldn't be too hard to fix one way or another.

Alloy footrest plates on Phil's RGS are different, and were probably made by the factory's FLAM foundry. Laverda's alloy casting generally isn't too bad, but it's not up to the standard of Japanese bikes. The more you polish it, the more flaws you'll find.
 
Thats them Cam, I fixed them years ago when I bought them. The landing pad for the footpeg was the issue. I made a timber plug for the mounting hole and drilled a small pilot hole in the timber, then I used this pilot hole to centre a hole saw, used this to recentre the landing pad, ended up with a cut hole with no depth on one side  and about 5mm deep 180 degrees on the other side. Then I used a stone grinding tool the same size used the hole saw marks as a guide pushing this stone directly into the hole cutting it to a different depth but only on one side, bit hard to describe but it ended well with the peg square and bearing flat . Shit load of work to fix a vertualy useless part. And they were far from cheap.
 
VanguardontheLav said:
Doesn't Phil's bike have non-standard footrest hangers, Cam?
Click to expand...
Umm ??? Aren't they just your average garden variety RGS ones or am I missing something here
Isn't his bike an RGS
 
Yep, mine are definitely the standard footrest hangers. I was basing my assumption on what I found when I polished these. They'd been powder coated and had suffered from corrosion building up under the coating; took a lot of work with multiple grades of wet'n dry to get them looking good but I was continually finding cavities in the alloy as I was polishing it. It may very well be that these were considered non-critical components and not manufactured to the same standards as the engine components.
Got to say though, from years of experience of working on all sorts of bikes (Brit, Japanese, Yank, Italian) I've never seen such a heavy (and hard) oxidised layer on the engine as on the Lav. This may not be an indication of inferior alloy, I'm not a metallurgist so don't know the cause, but it certainly suggests different properties to the others I've come across and some of those have been pulled out of rivers!!
 
Okay, so everything is ready for the engine to come out, all necessaries disconnected, triple checked and out of the way.
So any advice on getting this lump out? Looks a bit hefty (although with head and barrel off it'll be a bit lighter) so assuming a two man job to get it out OR is it possible as a solo job??
 
Remove the LH rear rubber mounts only, leave the others bolted to the frame/crankcase.  Pull the 3 studs and lift engine up at the front, it then slips out to the left.  Assembly is reverse.  Wise to put some padding over the lower frame rails, difficult to remove the engine without scratching the frame, especially if you're doing it for the first time.

I've done it on my own in younger years, wouldn't advise it though.  Get yourself another pair of (strong) arms.

Easiest with one person either side.  Lift the engine out of the front mounts, slide to the left and rest it on the frame.  RH person comes to the left and grabs the front of the engine, out it goes.

Do it a dozen times and it can be done blindfolded! :D

piet
 
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