Sunday 17 March 2024

Project Volksrad - something abouts prophets, mountains and stopping

 "If the prophet does not come to mountain, the mountain will come to the prophet"... and it better not have early 1980ies Honda Goldwing integral brakes - 1st book of Greg, the Goldwing sermons, p. 1200.

With the plug wires hooked up correctly and a handful of fresh ones, which (added bonus) actually were long enough to route them properly things started to look a lot better on the engine front. 

So naturally the next step was to go through my box with old steel braided brake-lines and start converting the Goldwing from integral to conventional brakes. This would basically mean doing two things: Fit the front brakes with a double banjo bolt to handbrake pump. (Which would later be swapped out for a unit from a GSX600F with a 5/8" bore as the stock 14mm was leaking like a sieve.)

And the somewhat more elaborate part, of sealing up one port on the footbrake pump btw. the pump turned out to be somewhat of a show stopper as, just like its front counterpart, it was leaking and the old brake fluid had eaten away the paint on the frame. (Luckily repair kits are readily available and on the way.)

The actual conversion is pretty straightforward, as all I had to do was to cut the hardline with the fitting installed in the brake pump and then weld it up. Why the hardline? Because the flare on the bottom is what actually seals and whilst I am 99 percent sure that an M10x1.25 bolt and copper or ally washers would have done the job just as fine, this is kind of the more correct way to do it. 

The remaining port got a bit of cleanup with a brush and a file just to make sure it would seal well with a washer (it does, thanks for asking) and then really just route a brake line along the swingarm. Easy peasy really.

Which basically only left one hydraulic circuit left to tackle and for this one, as the name implies I went to a local hydraulics supply shop and bought a totally-not-a-brake-line to replace the bloated mess that was stock on this bike. 


Aside from a completely clogged up bleed nipple on the clutch slave cylinder things went about as smooth as one would expect things to go, when pretty much all the components are new or freshly overhauled. (Even though I overhauled that clutch slave four years ago.)

(Also in this picture - the new brake pump and slightly re-routed brake cables to make them fit a bit neater.)

Looks pretty good or stock if you ask me.


Bleeding went... well enough to be honest, but as for now Project Pickle, my new (to me) Suzuki SJ410 has priority over the Goldwing and before fitting the exhaust, I really want to overhaul the rear brake system entirely as the pump is leaking and brake pistons are "a bit" sticky or in other words, once applied won't let you move the big girl an inch. As such,  for now she's back in hibernation, but I promise it won't be another four years...

Sunday 3 March 2024

Project Pickle - making the engine run again (part 5.1)

Now I ended the last post along the lines of:

I somewhat doubt I messed up the timing

Which, to be honest is exactly what I did. Luckily it was the kind of harmless, not breaking anything  kind of "messed up the timing". At least I was right about the fanblades hitting the shroud. As I had a few lovely days in Palermo to think about all of this the most obvious answer was that I must have gotten the crank 180 out, when I rolled it forward to flush the block and accidentally knocked it in gear. 

Whilst my working hypothesis would turn out true, I was a bit relieved to see that the markings still lined up and nothing had gone terribly wrong on the inside for the timing case.

The master-bodgineer in my concluded that if this was truly the case, the rotor would point in the completely wrong direction, as in the opposite of either of the cylinders 1 or 4 that would be at TDC. Easiest way to establish this was by taking the distributor cap off and having a look and guess what: #4 was at TDC and it was in the ballpark of #1.

Now you can obviously fix this the right way, by adjusting the cam-timing, or you could test it by flipping the cap around 180 degrees, which some clever Nippon-Denso engineers prevented by making the distributor body sport a little nose on one side. Cheeky b*st*rds.

So I removed the timing belt tensioner and turned the crank a full revolution until the marks lined up again and then reinstalled the belt, making sure that it would be tight on the tension-side.

As a sort of extra-curricular activity, I also marked TDC on the crankpulley. Even though there are no marks on the outside of the timing belt cover, it could at some point in the future come in handy for adjusting the valves or the like. 

Talking of stuff that might come in handy in the future: I also painted the timing marks on the flywheel so I will have a slightly easier time dialing in the ignition in the hopefully not too distant future.

With the engine running again like it should, as a matter of fact with 4 tightened spark plugs it ran nicer than ever, the terrible noise of the fanblades hitting the shroud hadn't disappeared and left quite a mark...

... and for future reference: there's a quite prominent UP-mark on the right side of the fanshroud that's obviously not just there for stylistic purposes.

I still have one more post in my quiver to bridge the current work of cutting out all the old rusty panels and until I am able to show some actual progress in that field. (Or in other words: currently tackling the floorpans and oh my, some good surprises there...) Regardless of that I hope someone will find this post useful in troubleshooting his or her timing mistakes.

Wednesday 21 February 2024

Project Pickle - engine tidy up (part 5)

Once back in my dad's workshop it was really the first time that I realised just how much smaller the little Pickle is compared to Comrade Car (my previous Lada Niva 1600).

With the front grill removed, I have to admit, I have yet to find a car/truck that is nicer to work on. Also, as hinted at before, I am sure there's bigger Golf-carts than the lil' Pickle.


With the radiator removed (4 bolts for the radiator, 4 for the fan shroud), slightly loosen the alternator mounting bolts and the fan belt comes right off. 

Couple dugga-duggas and the crankpulley comes right off.

Timing belt was definitely due - it felt more like a rubber band than an actual belt to be honest.


To make life easier (and be able to feel, if I got the timing wrong), I marked all the plug caps and then proceeded to remove the plugs. Only to find out that the two center ones weren't even remotely tightened. 


And a quick picture of how the timing was set up, when it was still running, never hurt nobody. (Foreshadowing)

The lower pulley has got some M8-threads and the pivot bolt of the tensioner is perfect to press it off the crank.

Looking at the area around the crankshaft seal made me realise that I might have found the very first of the oil-leaks of this engine.

To be honest, when you're already in there, you might as well do the camshaft seal as well.

Ironically despite its looks, the thermostat was still working.

The waterpump put up a good fight and must have been leaking for a while already.

As the cast iron of the mating surface was a bit pitted, a generous amount of liquid gasket was applied to the block in order to stop things from leaking again.

As some previous owner had lost at least one of the spacers for the timing cover (10mm OD, 7mm ID, 7mm tall), I quickly turned a bit of stainless pipe into a handful of spacers. 

And then reinstalled everything to the same marks as before...

Double checked by turning the engine over two full revolutions without plugs.

A few drops of loctite to make sure that the camshaft pulley retainer bolt stays put.

Everything buttoned up.

Flushed the radiator one more time

Installed the whole lot and filled the cooling system via the thermostat housing.


Unfortunately there's no happy end to this story here, to me the timing looks correct (left-side as it was, right side when I was done):

 But alas, it makes the most horrible ticking sound imaginable and instantly wants to rev to the moon. Two theories on my side: 

  1. The fan-blades are hitting the shroud (had that on the Lada, because there the metal shroud got bent, when I removed it.
  2. The spark plugs weren't tightened, because they are too long. (The engine is tuned with an LJ80 head to bump up compression.)

I somewhat doubt I messed up the timing, so I hope it's the harmless bit with the fan blades and now that the two center plugs are done up correctly it's running like it should and the carb and ignition are completely off. If it's the plugs hitting the valves, well let's hope I haven't broken anything yet.

Tuesday 20 February 2024

Project Pickle - Rust (part 4)

Now, I assume it's a pretty safe bet to say that nobody likes to find rust on his/her/their project car, but I have to admit it was kind of soothing to find it for me. Why? Becaus if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it's most likely just a dog with flippers. Seriously though, it simply seemed too unreasonable to expect no rust, especially given how rust holes were fixed in the past. And dare I say: someone LOVED bondo.

First step was to remove the front bumper.

And then get the angle grinder with a wire brush out and see why pickle sported completely flat sides atop of the wheel arches. 

Ah yes, that'll explain the bow in the sill.

Bit more digging and it's clear - two new front fenders will save A LOT of work.

Did I mention that someone that someone loved bondo? Seriously the section under the fuel filler cap is a healthy 13mm (1/2") thick and the bead has been completely plastered over.

 

As I had already arrived at the back of the little car, it seemed rude not to take the rear bumper off - all 4 bolts holding it to the floorpan snapped and the center bolt had a stripped nut, so here's a bit of work for future me. 

As the rear body corners were both fine, I went ahead removed the grill, which unlike the fenders had next to no rust at all. (Which sort of makes me wonder, if this one might have been swapped at some point in time.) Admittedly I feel a bit of a Series Landy vibe going on and I am almost sure one could fabricate a front to match... Also as the next thing (even prior to doing the rust repairs) is to do a full service on the engine: timing belt, thermostat, swap the radiator, reseal the manifold, tackle some oil leaks, you get the idea, having no grill in the way makes it even easier to do those jobs. 

With the front tackled as far as I can take it at this point (as I want to drive the little truck over to the other workshop and not have to push it all the way), I turned my attention back to the rear. Usually the cover for the filler neck is bolted on, here it was welded to the floor plate with an ungodly ugly patch panel, which to put it mildly didn't inspire the level of confidence I was aiming for and guess what: mouse poop and rust. Especially seeing how the last person did the inner wheel arches made it very easy to come to the conclusion to do a slightly better job at this end myself. 


 This left the tailgate as a last piece to undergo a more thorough inspection and to no one's surprise, there's a few spots both inside and outside, where the skin had and thus leaked inside and outside. Or in other words, the rear window has to come out as well and a bit of reconstructive metal surgery needs to be done.

And with that the little Suzuki was placed inside the other workshop and rust repairs should start very, very quickly. 


One thing I plan to do differently than how I did it on the Lada is to break the work down into smaller subassemblies, for example I will fix the new bonnet in my workshop and then transfer it to the car, same goes for the tailgate. I am still a bit on the fence on how to do the sills as a lot of guys seem to swap them for thick-wall box section, which is very, very pragmatic, but I am not sure what my MOT guy would have to say about that. If I go down that route it's *just* the floorpans, inner and outer wheel arches and a repaint, before I can get back to reassembly. Sounds overly optimistic? Yep, totally.