Return to Thunderdome, the Saga Continues

[Kansas Bad Man]

Hey Max...are ya plannin to be at BUB this year?  I read your journal/build diary with great interest and I'd love to get some photos of you and the liner.  It'll be my first BUB meet, although I did a lotta photos at the Shootout last year:

http://www.chevyasylum.com/lsr/bsf2008/shootout/Welcome.html

Hope to see you there.

RtR

Hey RtR,

For sure I'll be at the Bub Meet.  If all goes well I'll be at World of Speed, and then--who knows?

You bet.  Bring film and click away.

                                         Max

[RayTheRat]

You got it Max.  I'll shoot as much digital film as I can carry. 

RtR

[Uncle Jimbo]

Max - Stainless -  Thanks you two so much for this fantastic build diary. Once I got started reading and looking at the pictures that Stainless has been taking I couldn't stop till now. Max, you are a freekin genius, and master machinist in my book. We wish you the best of luck in 09, and hope your dream comes true. We will be looking for your pit area at the BUB meet once again. You guys are some of the greatest.

Jimbo

[octane]

Max - Stainless -  Thanks you two so much for this fantastic build diary. Once I got started reading and looking at the pictures that Stainless has been taking I couldn't stop till now. Max, you are a freekin genius, and master machinist in my book. We wish you the best of luck in 09, and hope your dream comes true. We will be looking for your pit area at the BUB meet once again. You guys are some of the greatest

Amen to that.

Brilliant thread
Brilliant machine
Brilliant guy

[Stainless1]

Max - Stainless -  Thanks you two so much for this fantastic build diary. Once I got started reading and looking at the pictures that Stainless has been taking I couldn't stop till now. Max, you are a freekin genius, and master machinist in my book. We wish you the best of luck in 09, and hope your dream comes true. We will be looking for your pit area at the BUB meet once again. You guys are some of the greatest

Amen to that.

Brilliant thread
Brilliant machine
Brilliant guy

Yes he is "a freekin genius", I have been impressed by his work since I saw his first (turned out it was his third) bike on the salt.  Hopefully everyone has visited his website to read about his exploits over the years. 
http://www.vincentstreamliner.com/index.html
As a note to any young reader on the site... If you want to learn to do stuff like this, you might want to start thinking about joining the Navy... they don't teach this sort of thing in school (or the other services)... When you are in the middle of nowhere and your boat is broken, guys like Max had to make the part from whatever was available.  Experience is a great teacher. 

I have some more pics to post, but I also have a bunch of work to do since I have a wall removed from my house... BTW, Max gave me some good "shoring up" advice which I followed and my second story is still up there...

Here is the teasers, Max painted this cover after he did all the machining to realign it after a few other changes...  Over-sprayed  the bearing because as you can see it is missing a roller... the paint shop is open

[Stainless1]

OK, the hole in my house is closed up, so here we go again...
The cover Max painted goes here and has bearings that carry the crankshafts.  The bearing you could see is for the front engine

This is where the rear bearing mounts.  Max found it was a couple of thousands off, so the relocated the bearing mount, rotated and dowels re-drilled.  Max determined that there was still a small error in the bearing alignment.  It seems a couple of years ago, the cover over the gears worked loose and warped the outer cover, putting about a degree-ish of misalignment on the bearing.  Max was about to make a new cover, he did not want to machine the cover any thinner, when he decided to look at the bearing carrier again. 

He decided the misalignment could be cured by milling the angle on the carrier.  You can't see it, it is hard to see without a caliper in your hand, but the bearing is now aligned and the crankshaft rotates freely.  Max in spending a lot of time this year with the motors, making every fitment as ideal as possible.     

[Stainless1]

Went over to check on Max, caught him playing on the internet, writing a thread on bench racing....  but it was OK, he was multi-tasking.... this time instead of watching paint dry he playing on the web 

This fist picture was in the paint shop... He just finished the paint job, inside and out

Then Max moved the case to the bench where the pictures would be purdier... and a little easier to see

This side of the case is just about ready to start assembly, clean and painted.  The guy in the red shirt is Dennis Dye, aka windjammer on this site.   He has been visiting Max to check progress and providing a little much needed sponsorship cash now and then.  More on that later....

And then Max added the 2 gravity feed fittings, just for a little color and to make it a little easier to recognize which piece this is.

[Stainless1]

Yes Max has been doing other things other than cleaning and painting.... He did that while the welds on this case cooled.  A while back I showed you the oil dam construction on the other case half.  Remember Max wants to carry  some oil in the cases, so the gravity fed oil be scooped and slung on  the pistons.  Well the dam must be built on both case halves.

Max also moved the case drain.  The case picture above shows the approximate relationship of the motor position, with the front jug almost vertical.  The drain was behind the dam and had to be moved.  The drain will be used every run, so the old plug for this hole will be changed to an AN fitting with a cap, reducing the risk of cross-threading the case. 

From the other side of the welded hole.  Not finished, but you get the idea of what is happening

Well, when that case is finished, all this stuff gets cleaned and put back in...
last post I mentioned Dennis provided some sponsorship, see the bearing on the top.... now look back a few posts, the bearing that was missing a roller... this is the replacement... Dennis' last $50 contribution bought this bearing and almost enough gas to go to the parts store to get it....
Aren't any cheap parts in racing....   

[Stainless1]

Luckily I went by Max's yesterday, as the ice was starting to blow in.... I posted the south side pictures on the ECTA thread... here are a couple from the north, the other side of the truck looks like the windshield, but I ain't going out there for that picture...   

The wind was driving the ice harder than Donny could drive the Black Lightning... the upstairs window... Enough about Spring in Kansas...

I did say I went to visit Max... The other side of the main case I showed on the last visit is prepped, painted and now ready to go back together

[dwarner]

We also have tough weather in So Cal. I can't decide what color shorts to wear today.

DW

[Stainless1]

We also have tough weather in So Cal. I can't decide what color shorts to wear today.

DW

Thanks Dan, sometimes the weather here makes you wonder why folks live up in SSS's part of the world.... Hopefully it will all be gone by Monday when Linda has to go to work... 

The back motor case has also been prepped and painted

Yes, clumsy me, knocked over the ash tray... OK maybe not... the maid sweeps up once a week, usually after I visit...  The brass part is the oil strainer.... that is British for filter...

The spark plug indexing washers came in a couple of days ago...

When you think about doing a project like this, always set a budget and then add a zero. 
So far this year Max is outspending his Social Security and Navy Pension checks, but he said he has most of the required parts secured for this year, just a couple remain, Shocks.... he showed me the shocks he is planning to use, and now I am waiting to see them, I think I need a set for the lakester. 
If anyone wants to add their name to the list here
http://www.vincentstreamliner.com/BlackLightning/contrib/contribd.html
all you need to do is hit the Donate button... and now back to our regularly scheduled program...

While some of the progress seems a little slow, there is a lot of detail work going into these old motors... Max says it sure would have been easier if he had started with a couple of Hayabusa motors 20 years ago....  other than the fact there weren't any ...
Max prefers the road less traveled anyway

[Seldom Seen Slim]

"...sometimes the weather here makes you wonder why folks live up in SSS's part of the world..."

Perfect attitude!  It's terrible up here.  Stay home.  Go away.  Don't move here.  Come visit if you'd like, but spend your money quickly and then go home and tell everyone it's lousy.

We like having so few neighbors.  1/3 of Michigan's land area -- about 3% of the state's population.  This is good.  Why, we've got a stoplight only 16 miles from the house -- and darn near 20 of them in this county (which is the largest county in Michigan, by the way).

[Stainless1]

Yep, the UPers are a hardy bunch, 4 feet of fresh snow, not problem.... just stay in until you can get the door open... to dig your way out... 

But us midwesterners are not like that... While it has been about a week since I stopped to see Max, I figured he was sitting around smoking and deciding what to do next.... WRONG.... he has been in full blown thrash.  The crankcases were assembled, the cylinders installed, the heads installed on the rear cylinders of both motors... WOW, Max has been hard at it...

Looking at the front, it looks like the there is an extra gear on the front crank.... Max said he thought about using that to drive the fuel pump...NO .... OK it is just a spacer to hold everything temporarily torqued in place so Max can time the motors. 

There's the fuel pump, it is gear driven from the other side of the motor... and while we are here, Max noticed a little kink in the old water hose to the front cylinder, maybe that was limiting the cooling up there.  The fix, a spring to keep the hose in the correct shape.

[Stainless1]

The engine cooling system.  The original Vincent was air cooled and while that works well for 50 to 80 HP in an open bike, air will not keep a motor cool in a closed bike making almost 500 HP even if you throw loads of alcohol in it. 

Lets look at the cylinders, they are special built for the extra stroke and then wrapped with the added water muffs.  Working out the water paths to eliminate trapped air was not a small task.  Let's look at the front motor.  The water hose from the tank goes in the lower inlet of the rear cylinder and on to the lower inlet of the front cylinder via a short hose. 

Water exits the front cylinder via the upper outlet on a short hose to the rear cylinder upper outlet, joins with the rear cylinder upper outlet water and exits back to the tank.  It may be hard to see, but the inlets are lower than the outlets making it easier to eliminate trapped air.

The rear motor cooling is a mirror image of the front motor cooling .... Just change the words front and rear for each other in the description above...

This is not the only cooling, Max also has a total loss cooling system, spraying water on the heads to leach heat from them... that is on the bike and if I don't go over that later you will just have to look at last years thread...
http://www.landracing.com/forum/index.php/topic,3908.0.html
and catch it there. 

[Stainless1]

I know everyone saw this on the front cylinder of the rear motor in the previous pictures, you probably also noticed the head was not on the front cylinder of the front motor, so I guess I should tell ya what is going on. Max had to get .motors together and everything torqued in the bottom ends so the motors could be timed together.   The rear heads of both motors are also torqued down.  The is the piston timing stop.  Max installed it on the front motor first, set the piston up to it, removed the stop and installed it on the back motor. 

Remember back a while ago I told you Max had one more gear cut a pin slot in, it was the drive gear for the rear crankshaft.  The stop sets the motors to the same point midway through the stroke.  The motors fire the rear cylinders together then the fronts (big bang motor, 1500 cc per bang) Once set to the same point,  Max could mark the gear to be EDMed for a pin.

Max took the gear to MPM Inc for the keyway EDM work.