RobbieRobot Cafe Racer Project in pictures

Thanks Tony, The Left Hand Switch assembly is from a Suzuki GSF1200 Bandit 2001 and the Right is from a Suzuki GSXR SRAD 600 / 750. Both items sourced from eBay. I've also drilled and tapped an M6 thread into the steering lock lugs each side of the frame and fitted cap screws from the front to restrict the steering range.

 

My daughter Lauren says 'Hello' to all you guys at XJBikes.

 

I don't think I would have to add any stops with my setup, just looking to have the choke control re-positioned and get the benefit of a "flash to pass". That'll help get the cagers to notice me when I need to get their attention.

BTW, I have three daughters, and your daughter Lauren adds quite a nice accent to your bike. I've never thought to have one of mine part of any photos of my machines? Maybe just as well, as I'd be concerned that nobody would actually look at how nice the bike really is.

 

Good god that thing is awesome! You did a killer job.

 

HaHa oops, I didn't think of that. She really likes the bike though and I taught her to ride a 250 trials bike in her early teens.

 

Thank you, you are too kind.

 

Robbie, I think you should revisit that front fender brace.
Bike looks great.

 

Thanks. l'll see if I can get some ideas and have a look at improving it. It does look a bit 'home made' but there again it is.

 

Further evidence that RobbieRobot is good at making pretty things.

(Though I have to agree with wizard; the fender bracket doesn't seem to fit with the aesthetics of the rest of the bike.)

 

Comments duly noted. Watch this space.

 

Very nice! The thing that gets me is how you managed to do all of that work so quickly, it would have taken me at least a year to do what you have done there. Congratulations, enjoy her.

 

Thanks althomas101. I work a twelve hour shift system for Rolls-Royce, manufacturing turbo fan engines. Two twelve hour day shifts, two twelve hour night shifts and four days off (including the first day that my night shift finishes, half of which is spent in bed). The Café Racer build has become a bit of an obsession so apart from a few weeks break in summer I've pretty much spent most of my free time working on it since March 2013. It's still WIP though, read on.

I rode the bike over to my local testing station on Wednesday and she passed her MOT with no problem, however she wouldn't rev above 4000 revs (50mph in top) whilst riding her there and back. I removed the pod filters at home and gave her a brief spin out. Much better. I returned home and re-fitted the pod filters onto the original rubber connecting ducts and went for another spin. A big improvement. I know I have some work to do here on re-jetting if I stick with them.

I rode over to an auto-trimmer yesterday the outcome of which produced some good news and some bad news.
The good news is he is going to upholster the seat for me for about £80. I've done everything myself so far apart from powder coat the frame and wheels ( I got them professionally done) but I have very little skill in upholstery and I know how good this guy's work is, so I think that is something of a bargain. We'll find out when it's finished in a couple of weeks.

The bad news, .... after a steady 80 mph run for about 5 miles, the engine seemed to become mechanically louder and hesitant. By the time I'd completed the 8 mile journey to see the upholsterer, she sounded quite rough. The journey home was even worse. By now I was nursing her along almost expecting a seizure at any time. She was clattering quite loudly as I entered the final mile or so and I was keeping her below 40 mph. She felt and smelled very hot and on arrival home I removed the plugs. They were all light brown in colour and there seemed to be good compression on holding my thumb over the plug hole and turning her over. Phew, no holed pistons. I then removed the cam cover and nothing appeared wrong here. I even started her up and witnessed plenty of oil splashing around the cams for the few seconds I let her run. The cam chain still seemed OK and tensioned, no broken tensioner. The timing marks were correctly aligned. I then let her cool fully and checked the valve clearances. Shock horror!!!!, I couldn't even get a 0.001" feeler into no.1 and no.4 inlet and no.1 and no.4 exhaust. No.2 inlet was 0.004" no.3 inlet was 0.005". No.2 Exhaust was 0.005" and finally no. 3 exhaust was 0.006". On initial re-assembly I had;
Inlets 1-4, 0.006" ,0.007", 0.006" and 0.006"
Exhausts 1-4, 0.007", 0.008", 0.006" and 0.006"
I am now wondering if I have made a mistake by slackening and re-torquing the head after the first run several weeks ago. Maybe I shouldn't have slackened all of the nuts at once. Maybe I should have done one at a time. Anyway, I am wondering if somehow the head has slightly bent under the stresses applied by the cams during the erroneous re-torquing exercise. I can't think of any other reason for the bad valve clearances. Especially as it's the end ones that have closed-up. I am open to any advice but I think I will remove the head and re-lap the valve seats in case any burning has taken place. Then re-assemble and re-torque the head before fitting the cam shafts, the same as I did the first time only this time I won't slacken the head nuts all at the same time before re-torquing.
As they say, "there's no rest for the wicked".

 

It's not a pushrod motor, so head torquing shouldn't change the valve clearances.

What I suspect happened is that when you initially checked them, the valves weren't fully closing due to rust, or whatever, giving you falsely "wide enough" readings.

Now that you've run the motor, they cleared out and are now closing fully resulting in more accurate readings (out of spec.)

Another thing: the "published" valve clearance specs for the 650 Seca motor are often the incorrect ones.

Your valve clearances are supposed to be .11mm ~ .15mm inlet and .16mm ~ .20mm exhaust, like the other aircooled XJs.

You also might want to check and be sure you aren't running with a sump full of "half and half" gas/oil mix (which would indicate a float issue.)

 

Well. No good news this time. The engine clattering noise was a result of excessive camshaft bearing wear. Having removed the camshaft caps extreme scoring of the shaft and caps was evident. It seems some sort of lubrication failure has occurred. Until I investigate further I can only assume an oil passage has been blocked or somehow some blast media has been retained from the refurbishment process. The latter is something I was warned could happen, but only after I had done the work. Apparently the fine blast media has been known to impregnate the microscopic pores of alloy components. I am only guessing at the moment though. I do know the oil hasn't been contaminated with fuel. Either way it is a catasrophic situation for the head and camshafts. I am now faced with the choice of swapping the head from my spare engine, or swapping the whole engine. Further investgation as to the cause of the current problem is needed first. S**it happens sometimes.

 

sorry to hear this. bike was progressing so well. good luck.

 

I would expect the latent blast media could also have found it's way into the crank case. I would opt for an entire engine swap. good luck.

I would also ad, that the only blast media you should ever blast engine parts with would be soda. and even then you want to rinse it all off immediately.

CN

 

Thanks bendoza. It's certainly a setback but hey, I've got all winter to rework it.

 

Yes CN, I was thinking the same thing. The 2nd engine is the slightly earlier cable driven tacho type with different cam cover fasteners. I think parts are interchangeable but if it was an abrasives problem I think I will resign engine no1 to spares status. I will have to put the rework on hold for a while though. I've promised my very patient 'better half' that I will re-decorate the kitchen before Christmas.
BTW I think we both know what THAT noise was now. You live and learn.

 

The fender brace fades into insignificance.

 

It certainly does Wiz.

 

Trouble ahead.

 

The camshaft problems were the first indication of a much worse problem. Further investigation today has revealed catastrophic damage to the big-ends (4mm play for one in particular). The decision as to whether or not to change the whole engine has now become an easy one. Engine A is well and truly FU**ED. Tomorrow I hope to service engine B, fit the carb rack from engine A, see how she runs and take it from there.

 

Rather than end the day on a negative note, here is a pic of RobbieRobot Café Racer last week.

 

well done!

CN

 

as a very good friend of mine used to say (and probably still does), "junk is junk, it don't come in grades".

CN

 

Shame to hear about the motor! Good luck with engine B! I've decided to take a few steps back on my project as well and do it the right way like you've done with yours.... in the next few days I'll be taking the whole thing apart, engine out of the frame and polishing, painting, and power coating! Yikes!

 

hey Robbie, I am devastated... dun know what to say!

but keep working on it and reap the rewards later.

kinen1

 

Two days ago I brought the donor bike in from the cold and had a close look at the engine. First off I took the plugs out and discovered that no3 plug hole had been re-bushed and also the threads in no2 were less than perfect but I could tighten a new plug down OK. I had witnessed the engine running on the day I bought the bike a few weeks ago but hadn't started it since. I drained the oil into a clean container then sieved it through a nylon stocking, there had been no oil filter fitted. There was no sign of foreign matter in the sieved oil though. Next thing was to remove the cam cover and a couple of camshaft bearing caps for inspection. There were signs of wear on the camshaft bearing surfaces but only as much as you would expect from a 33 year old engine. The speedo reads 22,000 miles but I have no way of knowing if any of the 15 previous owners ever changed the speedo. On re-torquing the caps down I checked the torque on all of the other caps and found 2 bolts wouldn't tighten. I removed them and found some of the threads clogged with alloy and damaged. Two bolts from engine A did torque down to the required torque though. This situation didn't instil much confidence so far. Next job was to check the valve clearances. I found that the maximum gap wasn't necessarily at 180 degrees to the cam lobe. Some were at their widest point around 90 degrees after closing the valve. I guess this must be further evidence of camshaft wear. Has anybody else found this? Not to be deterred I worked on the assumption that the widest gap would be the reading I would take regardless of the actual position of the cam once it closed the valve. I had to replace 3 of the shims on the inlet side and one of the shims on the exhaust side to get them into spec. Luckily I had the necessary shims from engine A. I then cleaned the mating surfaces and re-fitted the cam cover without a gasket as a temporary measure. I then fitted the carb rack from engine A and refilled the engine with some of the sieved oil. There was about a pint and a half left over with the oil level three quarters of the way up the sight glass which meant the engine had been overfilled in the first place. The oil looked good and didn't smell of fuel so I don't think it had been contaminated, just overfilled. After an auxiliary fresh fuel supply was rigged up the engine started immediately with minimal choke. Have a look at the video in next post.

 

Engine B Running

 

Engine B sliding out of the frame.

 

Engine B out of the frame

 

Engine B on the bench

 

I probably should have stripped the bottom half of the engine as well as just the top half. I think it's more than likely that some foreign matter had got into engine A at some point despite being as careful as possible to prevent this happening. I don't suppose I'll ever know for sure if it was residual blast media or something else such as particles of dirt/paint/metal/gasket. Also having not inspected the bottom half of the engine I don't really know what condition it was in in the first place. I did find a chunk of the lower engine casing just in front of the L/H side cover had been ground away in a crash and had been 'repaired' with filler by the previous owner. Good luck with your polishing, painting and powder coating.

 

Yes, thanks, it was a big disappointment, still, onwards and upwards!

 

Debris found in oil pump strainer from engine B

 

Wowch! that's not nice, still I suppose rather find it in the strainer than in the cam journals...

Speaking of which, the wear on the failed engine did look very like blast media damage, very uniform scratches all the way across the journals and I couldn't see evidence of alloy "pickup" or heat bluing that would suggest lack of oil at all. I suppose if you really wanted to find out, you could dissect the oil filter/reverse flush it through some coffe filter paper & see what's there. If it's blast media there's likely to be a lot of it accumulated in the filter too. Such Is life I guess, at least you've got the right attitude & getting on with the job in hand. Best of luck with the "new" engine. Bike looks good IMO

 

Thanks for the supportive words.
Today I have had chance to look a little further at engine A. I've had the oil pump out and had a close look in the sump. I am almost certain the camshaft damage was secondary because it's very evident that number 2 big end has failed big time. The others are all ok in comparison. There are masses of white bearing debris in the sump and, of course, lots of fine particles, some of which may have been blast media but it would be impossible to identify it as such. The finger nail clipping size flakes of white metal were easily the most obvious and must be the remains of number two big end bearing. This, of course, doesn't exclude the possibility of blast media contributing to the engine failure but now that I've heard engine B running I am not so sure that engine A ever sounded very healthy. One thing for sure is there must have been a massive reduction in oil pressure to the top of the engine given the damage to number 2 big end. It would have been gushing oil out through the gap. I don't think I will ever know for sure but I am a little nervous about taking the head off engine B, but I would like to de-coke it, lap the valves and fit new valve stem seals.

 

There's nothing to be scared of re. taking the head off your "new" engine just make sure you follow the correct procedure/order for loosening the nuts, "safety cord" the camchain so it doesn't run off & hide down the bottom of the tunnel & be careful not to lever and gouge the head surface or damage the fins if it won't lift off easily.

 

After what happened to the first one I think I might just clean it up, paint it and fit it. I did everything meticulously the first time spending many hours and look what happened. You're right though, there's nothing to be scared of.

 

Well yes, I think I might be put off slightly by the experience. I'm 99% the motor was killed by abrasives though so as long as you didn't get any blast media near this it'd be fine.

That said, I suppose there's no real need to pull the head anyway if it was running OK. Engines don't seem to get as coked up with modern fuels & oils & if the compressions good then the valves are likely to be sealing OK. I have heard of people changing stem seals with the head on both by using compressed air to hold the valves shut & by feeding a coil of soft rope through the plug hole & blocking it between piston & valves but to be honest if they really needed doing it'd be a safer bet to remove the head.

If it was mine and compression was good & it didn't smoke, I'd probably leave it at setting the valve clearances & changing the oil/filter for now. Hope to see her back on the road soon whatever you end up doing.

 

Well, that's all the house re-decorating done. Three rooms in all (and a pulled muscle in my back). The wife's now happy (about the re-decorating, not my bad back), so I've resumed my work on my project. Basically cleaning up and removing the paint from engine B. I took a chance and bought a head complete with camshafts from eBay for £27. I didn't have great expectations but I was pleased to find that, apart from a broken header stud which has been partially re-drilled off centre, it checks out really good. I think I'll be keeping it in reserve though and give engine B a fair crack of the whip first.
I'd like to extend Christmas greetings to everyone here on XJBikes so here's wishing you all a very Happy Christmas.

From Robbie

 

Good luck with engine B and a very merry mad season to you to

 

Ditto on Newb21: Merry Christmas and good luck!

 

Engine 'B' after about 25 hours Dremel work to remove the paint.

 

Engine re-paint.

 

Engine 'B' after re-paint.

 

The first picture had me worried... the last two completely reverse it. Reeeeeaaally makes me wonder if I should pull my engine back out for a paint job... or be lazy and leave it in the frame. Get me off the fence, Robbie: what do you recommend?

 

Is was thinking the same thing from the first pic. But the next two... That looks great.

 

robbie, very nice work, what paint is that.
the can is the wrong way to tell.
cheers
stu

 

Ha ha. Thanks guys. The first picture does look dodgy but I had to get all of the old paint off because a lot of it was flaking. There should be another picture in between with the engine in etch primer. The paint I used is the same paint I used on engine 'A' after extensive research and testing. For the brief life of engine 'A' it held it's colour well and withstood oil and petrol contact as it did during the testing process. I first heard about it on another website where a guy had tested several products and recommended this because it doesn't need oven curing. The paint is Simonez Wheel Silver and is a pleasure to work with. The first engine's lower half was sprayed but the head and barrels were bare media blasted aluminium and the colour match was very similar. BaldWonder, I really wouldn't attempt the job with the engine in the frame. It took me many hours cleaning, de-greasing and dremelling. Then pressure washing to remove debris and particles of old paint. More de-greasing then etch priming. I had the engine slung with a block and tackle so I could get all around it then set it upright to continue spraying to make sure nothing was missed. It's not perfect because a lot of the Dremel tooling marks a visible through the paint but that was also the case with engine 'A' but it still looked good. Most of the side casings and covers will come off now to be replaced by the ones from engine 'A' as they are generally in better nick.