RGS valve seating
- Thread starter murphus
- Start date
CLEMTOG
Hero member
I thought that I had shown you the offending bits Nick ? and yes it was later than the time you and I both went there for crank rebuilding.
You are right about the warranty recall, at the time Slaters were buying the triples ex factory gate (no shipping, and no warranty of any kind) this may have even been pre EU days, but some goodwill was offered, they sent two mechanics to the UK to instigate the changes required, they are both very well known today, messers Tony Cavazin and Guisseppi Andrighetto (Beppe) the factory also supplied ten new cranks to get the ball rolling, once a few cranks were removed, in the South at least, they were shipped to Essex crankman and replacement centre mains fitted, nothing else, unless obvious, big ends and outer mains remaining and to be reused. There must have been a huge risk of rod damage with that amount of cranks being shipped around unwrapped, and plenty of them in the boot of Roger Slater's Ferrari!! They had extra employees and worked seven days a week for eight weeks to complete the programme, the engine removal/replacement (again in the South) was done by Martin Routley and Phil Todd at their Croydon Motodd premises, where the two Italians also operated a very fast strip, rebuild process. As far as I know there were hardly any "problems" resulting, and the first few of those affected (before the Italians arrived) even had their cranks changed when they had only booked their bikes in for a service, a few got suspicious (why is my service taking so long) but were not told, then the secret got out and the sludge hit the circulator. It was easily possible that your 5,000 mile old triple would get a crank installed that only had 300 miles on the not replaced bits. It very nearly bankrupted Slaters, it could have even done that for all I know, there have been a few name changes of the business run formerly by Roger and Richard then Richard with "sleepers" and latterly Richard and Mary, that is personal information that I don't really want to learn about.
It all gave me every confidence in Essex crankman, but it only takes one unsupervised slapdash employee, who for all I know, may have worked there on trial for only a month, and the user gets big disappointment. No point in trying to claim anything after maybe using it (albeit with problems) for two years or so, you just have to bit the bullet.
Annoyingly there is a very good crank rebuilder one mile from my home who does not dissimilar stuff on two stroke multi's, such as Yamaha TZ 700/750 race bikes, he has done a few two stroke singles for me, and couple of twins (TZ350) but I have never managed to talk him into doing my Laverda cranks, he did have a look and said that they were "far too heavy to ever be any good, too big in dimensions, and it would take too long to make the tooling, plus they last too long, so I wont do enough, and TZ's require rebuilding (new rods bearings) every 500 miles or so" and now he is virtually retired, dammit.
CLEM
You are right about the warranty recall, at the time Slaters were buying the triples ex factory gate (no shipping, and no warranty of any kind) this may have even been pre EU days, but some goodwill was offered, they sent two mechanics to the UK to instigate the changes required, they are both very well known today, messers Tony Cavazin and Guisseppi Andrighetto (Beppe) the factory also supplied ten new cranks to get the ball rolling, once a few cranks were removed, in the South at least, they were shipped to Essex crankman and replacement centre mains fitted, nothing else, unless obvious, big ends and outer mains remaining and to be reused. There must have been a huge risk of rod damage with that amount of cranks being shipped around unwrapped, and plenty of them in the boot of Roger Slater's Ferrari!! They had extra employees and worked seven days a week for eight weeks to complete the programme, the engine removal/replacement (again in the South) was done by Martin Routley and Phil Todd at their Croydon Motodd premises, where the two Italians also operated a very fast strip, rebuild process. As far as I know there were hardly any "problems" resulting, and the first few of those affected (before the Italians arrived) even had their cranks changed when they had only booked their bikes in for a service, a few got suspicious (why is my service taking so long) but were not told, then the secret got out and the sludge hit the circulator. It was easily possible that your 5,000 mile old triple would get a crank installed that only had 300 miles on the not replaced bits. It very nearly bankrupted Slaters, it could have even done that for all I know, there have been a few name changes of the business run formerly by Roger and Richard then Richard with "sleepers" and latterly Richard and Mary, that is personal information that I don't really want to learn about.
It all gave me every confidence in Essex crankman, but it only takes one unsupervised slapdash employee, who for all I know, may have worked there on trial for only a month, and the user gets big disappointment. No point in trying to claim anything after maybe using it (albeit with problems) for two years or so, you just have to bit the bullet.
Annoyingly there is a very good crank rebuilder one mile from my home who does not dissimilar stuff on two stroke multi's, such as Yamaha TZ 700/750 race bikes, he has done a few two stroke singles for me, and couple of twins (TZ350) but I have never managed to talk him into doing my Laverda cranks, he did have a look and said that they were "far too heavy to ever be any good, too big in dimensions, and it would take too long to make the tooling, plus they last too long, so I wont do enough, and TZ's require rebuilding (new rods bearings) every 500 miles or so" and now he is virtually retired, dammit.
CLEM
