My Latest Tip For Organizing Motor Parts

[mark1305]

Some of you probably have already figured this out, but it just came to me yesterday as I was running out of ways to procrastinate splitting another Ducati 900 crankcase.

Normally when I split cases or case covers, I draw the outline of the mating surface on cardboard and stick each fastener into a hole at its relative position on the motor. I've realized that I'm going to be ass deep in motors and parts for a while as I swap good parts in for bad parts to get two bikes running reliably.

So I got the bright idea to photograph the crankcase from the fastener side, print at a reduced scale (maybe 75%) and transfer the accurately svaled outline to a scrap of 1 inch MDO plywood. Then all the fasteners for the cases are marked by size (6mm and 8mm) in their respective positions. And a second hole is marked 1/2 inch inside the first. Five minutes on the drill press with a 1/4 inch and 5/16 inch bit and I have a neat organizer for crankcase fasteners for two motors at the time, which it appears will be the status for the foreseeable future. And I figured I wouldn't have to worry about a limp piece of cardboard dropping several critical bolts randomly on the floor while being handled. Of course, once I put the bolts from one motor into the evenly drilled holes, I discovered all the bolts of each diameter are the same length So it isn't really that critical to position them after all.

Still not a wasted exercise - it will be much quicker storing fasteners as I pull them and retrieving them during assembly. The outer case covers do have several different length bolts, so I will do up a similar rack for all of them soon.