LOVE your shop and tools. Is this a professional work space, or just for hobby? Also, with regard to wiring harness, I rebuilt a /5, and used a new factory harness. I found that it went in an wired up super easy. It looks like your bike was maintained by a TV repairman from the vacuum tube era. Looks like fun.
What do you think the durability issues would be, vibration, Temp, voltage, something I'm not thinking of? It is a professional work space that I have access to on occasion, and I love it too. My personal garage got downsized greatly when I moved last year so it is great to have found another place with some room to work. I am pretty set on building up a custom harness in part because I want to use it as an exercise to expand my knowledge about vehicle electrical systems, it is just a matter of exactly how I choose to build it. and yes the existing harness in very entertaining, I have it down on the bench in my basement for further dissection in the near future.
This is the OEM wiring harness sold by max BMW for $65.12. They have been very popular of late but most think the price will go way up when the current supply runs out and they have to make another run;
the last two weeks have been a been mostly taken up by work but progress hasn't halted either. Although admittedly a fair bit of time has been taken up (read wasted) trolling through for build ideas. I'm on page 41 of 45 looking though Lets see the Airhead Scramblers I've stumbled on a couple cool vimeo videos which reminded me we all have 99 problems <iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/45309295?byline=0&portrait=0&color=b08038" width="800" height="451" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe> <p><a href="http://vimeo.com/45309295">TVC</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/sags">SAGS</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p> This one makes me want to take a week or eight off and hit the road. <iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/49445992?byline=0&portrait=0&color=b08038" width="800" height="450" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe> <p><a href="http://vimeo.com/49445992">LONG LIVE THE KINGS - Short film documentary -</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/sags">SAGS</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p> oh and I had more than my share of pints in the last two weeks too. :slurp thanks to those who shared them with me whether you knew why or not getting back on topic this will be heading to the machinist soon to get the portals enlarged a bit to accept some 800cc nikasil jugs the heads spent some time seeing what it feels like to be a turkey 50/50 pinesol and water in the oven at 190 for a few hours and 43 years of grime just wiped right off. last but not least a bottle of pinesol a bottle of tepranillo and a few hours at the kitchen table the last couple nights found the carbs to be not just serviceable but in surprisingly great shape. not a stripped thread of buggered screw head in the the whole lot, the only casualties of time were a couple split washers.
Wrist pin retainers are never re-used. Toss the old ones now to avoid mix up. The size of the spigots in the block limit what you can do in larger jugs. I have run 900 jugs in a 75/5 block. Some say it's a no-no . The block was bored larger in anticipation of the larger displacement the following model year (the /6) but the crank is not as stiff. I had no problems, including running it pretty hard. Looks like very little corrosion on the exterior aluminum. This is good.
Don't do what I did and be cheap on the wrist pin retainers. Listen to Plaka. Cost me something like 500$ to do it wrong.
Thanks for the heads up on the wrist pin retainers. I'll pitch them before the parts go on the shelf. Little nuggets like that are exactly why I like doing these project threads. Plaka, glad to hear you had good luck upping the displacement with the 75/5 block. I think I'll be using some 800cc nikasil jugs so it should work for me too.
Randy at our machine shop here in town doesn't have a mill large enough to open up the portals on the block or trim down the spigots on the cylinders. But was able to tell me where to go and it's not too far out, hopefully they can get it turned around reasonably quickly.
This project got shoved to the back burner to make room for lots of spring tune ups in the shop and because I was having a bit of trouble finding a machine shop who could do what I wanted. The good news is after a very pleasant ride out into the country in the little red car I dropped the block and cylinders off at what turned out to be a very comprehensive and incredibly tidy machine shop in some guys back yard shed. Best of all when I pulled up his 60 something year old wife was out in front of the "shop" in a kitchen apron cleaning gaskets off of heads with an air sander. Inside were some very cool race engines and photos from decades of supporting local grassroots racing. Back at the shop for the afternoon I was able to get some bench time in on the Mogrel and do some parts "shopping" up in the stacks of old crap. I stripped the harness out and then mocked up some ideas to keep me motivated to get this thing back on the road. At the moment I'm thinking desert sled style. Now we're talking I like the bars I found and the PIAA amuses me. I think I want some trials or flattracker style rubber maybe some sr241's or some MT43's The slimmer profile of that denfield seat looks better than the taller /5 unit but I think I want it about 30% shorter in length and with no kick up at the back end, not sure if I'll cut up an existing pan or just build a seat from scratch sorry for the crappy photo quality I forgot the camera this morning so had to make do with the phone. So the good news is that the ball is rolling again, the bad news is that I am leaving town for a couple weeks in a few days but I will be able to start some engine building when I get back
So progress hasn't entirely halted but I did head up to New England for a bit to eat some Lobster and do some sailing with the grandparents and my brothers who I don't get to see too often so things did get paused a bit, I picked up the block at the machinist on the way back into town and here is where I stand at the moment. waiting on a couple parts that we didn't have in stock to come in this week so I can get the engine built up. I have been mulling over gauge/instrument ideas and had a hell of a hair brained one the other night over a couple beers. (more on that later) What I want is a single round gauge and while there are some very cool digital options out there, Acewell and MotoGadget for example, this bike isn't about doing what makes sense. Yes I could buy an OEM harness off the shelf for not much money, but I want to build my own. It would be way easier to just build up the 800cc nikasil jugs to one of the later blocks we have kicking around than to get the /5 block portals enlarged to 99mm. and I could buy a tidy new gauge to put everything I want in one place. nah, If I want tidy I'll go buy an F800 or something, I want to fuck about and see what I can make work. So lets see what I can come up with starting with this. :huh
Work has stalled again, I lost the 2.5mm woodruff key for the oil pump/camshaft I was making good headway on the short block assembly this morning after getting back from a week on the road on the PD but after and hour and a half of hunting both in my parts boxes and all through the shop supplies luck was not on my side. I found two 3mm keys but it looks like I'll have to get a 2.5mm on tomorrows parts order. here is a closer shot of the work that was done on the block and the shop where Mr Collier plies his trade and here are some photos of the progress I made on the short block assembly before coming to a grinding halt Crank end play worked out pretty nicely
with the fresh eyes of a new day I found the missing woodruff key sitting right on the bench a little hiccup with the updated cam carrier bolts contacting the timing chain sprocket aside things are going together smoothly
Priceless. Has happened more than once to every one of us. Enjoying your build. I suppose you offered to do the machining either way so Mr Collier made the decision to enlarge the ports in the block instead of turning down the spigots of the R80 cylinders? Did he elaborate on his reasons for this choice? I have always thought the other option would be easier but I'm not any kind of a machiniest so any light you can shine on this would be appreciated. This is a modification that is considered by many riders but rarely completed by any. I don't think the only reason is expense but it may be?
This is as good a time as any for some more on my new favorite machine shop. I already mentioned his wife helping him which has seemed to be the norm after a few trips, she is usually dressed like grandma in the kitchen except of course that she is working on engine parts. While standing there chatting on one of my visits something caught my eye around the corner of the shop behind a derelict riding mower so I asked what it was: "oh that, that's a '68 e type. It's been next years project for the last 20 years" turned out my eye for the rear quarter panel was about right, very cool. Now why you might ask have I gone a few times? Well, I had to go back for a bit more work but that was my fault not his. More on that shortly but in direct answer to your first question; I did offer that either the spigots or portals could be machined and asked which would be easier. While looking at both he said he could do either about as easily on his mill so I elected to have the block done which will allow me a bit more flexibility to swap out for other nikasil jugs in the future. He asked if I needed the step for the O-ring milled into the block (this is where it's my fault). I said no as long as they are a close fit I can run without o-rings, thinking that with the later, more precisely manufactured blocks and jugs you can be run without o-rings. What I didn't notice until I got back home with the block and jugs after the first work he did was that there is a tiny corner at the base of cylinder behind the o-ring groove. That tiny shoulder prevented the jug from sitting fully flat on the block. The gap was thinner than a typical gasket but was there none the less. He had assumed there would be a base gasket which would take care of it. So back I went (the trip where I noticed the Jag) and he was happy to add in the milled shoulder for the o-ring which can be seen in the photo above. I would think that there are two barriers to getting this done. I went through three other machine shops who either didn't have a good enough mill or were unwilling to take it on thinking that it would be so much time that there is no way they could make money at it. So one problem is finding a shop willing to do the work. When I went to pick the block up the first time Ted said it took him 4 or 5 hours to get the block jigged up in the mill to do the work since the machined face that the base of the jug sits on is the only square flat surface. He then said "How's Ninety dollars sound". I said that sounds more than fair and gladly paid him. When I went back to get the o-ring shoulder added he charged me $20 a side, I assume it was so much less since he had already figured out how to construct the jig to mount the block in his mill. All that is to say that I agree that if you can find a machine shop willing to do the work and if it takes 4 or 5 hours it is typically a prohibitively expensive modification.