Okay, let's start a new page of this log. My original plan was to start a new page after I have finished the bike for this summer but it seems that I still have some work to do. However, since the old page was getting quite long and I did managed to drive few kilometers with the bike I decided that this is a good time to turn the page anyway. Here's the picture about the bike as it is right now [PIC]. Notice the REAL bare bones seat :-)
The problem that I have currently is that I'm not having enough oil flowing through the rocker shafts and to the rocker arms. When the motor gets hot there are maybe 2 or 3 drops of oil per second coming out from the rocker shaft oil passage. There is no noticeable effect when the revving the engine. I think that it's not enough to properly lubricate the rockers and surely not enough to cool the top end of the engine.
Last winter I got a brand new oil pump so that should be in order. And I do have a good pressure when the engine is cold so there's no gasket blocking the oil passages or air pocket in the pump.
There are two possibilities that I can think of. One is that the rocker arm bushing are so loose that the oil just flows trough the intake rockers not getting to the exthaus rockers at all. Oh, I forgot to mention that I have only cheked the flow from both of the exthaust rockers, not from the intake ones. And actually front cylinder seemed to be a bit more active.
The other possibility is that the pinion bushing is so loose that the oil flows trough that, releasing that already a small pressure so that there is not enough to pusht the oit into the top end.
Tomorrow I'm going to remove the timing cover to see if that pinion bushing is in bad shape.

I didn't remember that I was going to be tied-up all night with work related stuff. So it's going to be tomorrow (earliest) when I'm at garage. Can't wait...

Just got back from the garage. I took off the timing cover and checked the pinion bushing, it was OK. Actually I found out that it should be totally shot before it would make any significant difference to oil flow (or pressure). This is because there is such a small resistance for oil to flow through pinion axle to the flywheel and to the crank pin that it WILL flow trough there. Having such a small resistance also explains why there is no real oil pressure after the engine oil gets hot.
I also checked the timing cover gasket, not for the blocked passage which has happened in some models but for extra openings that could let the oil flow directly back to the timing case. None found.
The oil is flowing, even when hot. I checked this from the oil tank while the engine was running. There was a good flow back to the oil tank. Again I took off the rocker shaft plug and this time I revved the engine for a bit longer, and sure enough, there was some oil coming out of that hole. Not much but clearly something that I could call a flow.
Having convinced that at least the bottom end gets lubricated I went for a spin with that pressure gauge removed. When I was doing about 50 to 60 mph the oil was coming out from the gauge fitting but when the engine revs. went down, so did the oil flow.
I can understand that there is no flow when at idle but I would assume that there should be some with less than 3000+ rpm. Maybe there is still something to find out?
Next I'm planning to check if there is a more obvious flow in the intake rockers since so far I have only checked the exthaust ones.

I checked the oil flow from the intake rocker shaft. It seems that there is an obvious flow even without revving the engine up to 3000 rmp. That's good news. However, in that case it must mean that there is such an easy passage through the intake rockers that there isn't much oil flow left for the exthaust ones. Since I was planning to do the top end overhaul at the winter, at the latest, I'm not that worried anymore. In fact I did some driving last night and today and I'm planning to do so also in the future.
Altough the bike is in use now I'm going to get a new set of rocker arms and shafts and do the job when appropriate. Until that time I just avoid the city and try to keep on the open road where I can keep up that 50-60mph :)
Right now I'm going to concentrate on the drum-to-disk conversion which still needs a master cylinder to be installed (somehow) and the brake line.

I just did a 130 mile drive to get a suitable banjo fitting for the rear brake hose. Hopefully tomorrow I can get the hose made and installed with the main cylinder. I still don't have a plunger for that, well that's because I also have no idea how to install necessary levers for that either. We'll see how that comes up...
About that oil circulation problem... It seems that to the front cylinder oli flows much more easier than to the rear cylinder. Maybe that's why there is such a lousy flow in there? I should ones more take off the heads and check the rockers for loose bushings. However I see no point on doing that until I have enough money to replace the rockers and rocker shafts if that's really needed.

Rear brake is kinda done. There's about as much braking power as there were with that beat-up drum brake but that's going to change (hopefully) when I get things finished-up properly. For example plunger and pedal assemblies still needs some work [PIC]. With that kind of set-up you just can't get enough pressure.
Rear section is quite OK but might need some cleaning-up [PIC]. Hose being that long allows the caliper assembly to be rotated to the top of the disk thus making the bleeding the system a bit easier (bleeder plugs are at the bottom of the caliper when at operating position).
Master cylinder sits quite nicely on it's place but the installation it self could be more robust or at least cleaner [PIC] [PIC].
Anyway, the concept is now tested. I'm going to fix the plunger and its parts and also overhaul the caliper, hoping that it will improve the brakes.

Well, it's been few days now without an entry. Maybe because there's nothing new to tell.
I spent last weekend in a summer cottage and the stay included heavy enough alcohol consumption and plenty of meat and sausages and of course A LOT of sauna since we are in Finland. I'm still pretty beat-up from the trip and had no interest in going to garage yesterday or even today. Maybe later...
Driving to and from work for few days now I noticed that I have an oli leak somewhere. Well, that's pretty normal I quess and certainly not in top of my list.

Dropped my bike today. First time ever since my boy-years. Just the classic front end lock while coming to sand paved yard. Gear shifter was little bent, nothing more, if you don't count the hit on my self-respect since there were couple of guys watching when I came in.
I'm still using the bike for commuting to work but when I start my vacation I'm planning to take the top end apart. Altough it will be seen how much I can get to the garage since our second baby is due by the July 11th and the situation after that is still pretty much unknown territory.

It has been pretty quiet here, sorry about that. We have a situation in the family that by the end of this week there might be four of us instead of three. That being the case, the wife is pretty beat-up (figure of speech) at the moment and that's why I have not visited the garage that often. It now seems that the labour will be jump started on wednesday. Hopefully, when everything goes well, I can put here a picture of our lates pride and joy by next week.
I did, however, study that oil flow problem a bit further. I warmed up the engine, then I installed a long clear hose to the back rocker box oil line and run the engine for a _short_ while. The oil went into the hose and clearly above the rocker box level, indicating that the rockers do get oil. Unfortunately while installing the hose the oil cooled down so much that when I re-installed the rocker oil line and run the engine some more there was oil coming out of that gauge fitting also. So I'm still not 100% sure how much oil flow I'm having in there while the oil is really hot.
About those oil pressure figures... when there is a pressure of 1 PSI at the oil pump it means that it is equal to about 0.7 meters of water and to about 1 meters of oil, if I calculated correctly and estimation about water/oil weight is about OK. That means that at idle there should be enough pressure (3 PSI at least) to push the oil up to 3 meters high, surely enough to get to the rocker boxes.

Well, nothing happened today, there are still only three of us. Still have to wait for almost three weeks, unless the baby decides differently.
And what this has to do with my bike is that I'm still using it and I'm not opening the heads before next month.
By the way, just realised how difficult it is to find mirrors that work with narrow drag bar. The old ones that I had were totally useless, all I could see was my arms and shoulders. I already tried one pair which also were of no use, altough seemed pretty OK at the store. Went back and got another ones [PIC]. These were the only ones that I could think of putting on, and luckily also the only ones that were at all useful.

Changed the front end bearing cups back to 0 degree ones. With the 3 degree cups I bought from W&W Cycle I couldn't tighten the bearings properly. Either there was significant play when using front brake or the bearings were just too tight. At first I suspected that the dust shields were dragging and I modified those to make sure that there is enough gap. That didn't do any good. Propably the propblem is that those cups are just too loose for the bearings. The outer race of the bearing is moving quite freely at its place. Quite freely meaning that the bearing can be taken out without any force, not that it's clacking from one side to the other. I'm using the same bearings that I used for the CC's 0 degree cups (Timken 07196) and I'm pretty confident that those should be the right ones but not 100% since there were no information with the cups when I got those. Any way, I'm now running with the old ones until next winter at least. Maybe I'll rake the frame then, who knows...

Okay, now I'm getting a bit nervous... in fact a LOT nervous. And this has nothing to do with motorcycles... nothing more than I just got back from a short drive where I tried to get my thoughts to something else.
The reason? Tomorrow morning the kind doctor is going to cut open my wife to get out our second child. The fact that our first child was also born by cecarian doesn't make this any easier, maybe worse since I already know how the wife is going to be for next couple of days, and actually much longer. Well, there's no way to back down now. And hey, what the hell I'm whining about, it's not me who's going to be cut open.
To be continued...

Okay, now our first child, boy named Matias has a brand new little brother. 4060g and 53cm. And here we are [PIC]. Proud as hell...

Hiya! Pretty quiet here, huh? Nothing done to my bike but some driving. Since I can only go driving while the rest of the family is having an afternoon nap the trips have been very short ones.
Past few days has been quite warm here, around 30 deg. celcius and so far there hasn't been any problems with the oil pressure. Last summer the idiot light lit up when the engine got hot and run in idle, nothing like that now and the engine has been pretty damn hot. So it seems that the new oil pump did fixed that problem.

Finally got that rear brake pedal and plunger fixed [PIC]. Now it looks rigid enough and works just fine, definately much better than it was in first picture on the may 28th entry.
I just did a short run to garage and back (abt 40km). Coming back the engine started to couch (fired in the exthaust). I already checked and changed the plugs, didn't fix the problem. Also moved the wiring to see if there is some loose connection or short circuit, no effect. When I got home I checked the distributor to make sure that there is enough gap, there was. Tomorrow I'll try another capacitor or maybe the whole distributor plate since I have one spare. If that won't do the job I'll propably get another coil to try with, it might be a good idea to have one as a spare anyway?
[PIC] Ready for a spin, huh? Maybe not quite yet...

Okay, the problem was faulty capacitor. But of course I first rechecked the wiring, including plug wires, made sure that there is fuel flowing from the tank, cleaned the float bowl, tried couple of different size jets and almost changed the ignition timing. Why? Well, for some reason these things (problems) happen always when you have done something to the bike. This time it was cleaning the air cleaner and washing the bike. Since the air cleaner was really filthy I suspected that since it's now flowing freely the problem might be related to changed mixture. Wrong... Also I spent some time making sure that there's no water in the coil or in the spark plugs and wires, including the distributor. At that time I _could_ have started the bike and instantly see that there was a lots of sparks between the circuit breaker. In fact I should have done that already day before yesterday, at the same time I checed the breaker gap but what the hell, let's just do it the hard way... Well the main thing is that the bike is now running OK.

On the road [PIC].

Heading back home [PIC].

Home, sweet home [PIC].

So, the story behind those three previous entries? I had some electronics stuff to get from another town but since I wanted to combine business with pleasure using a car was just out of the question. I had already missed too much motorcycle driving this summer and this was too good a chance to be missed.
So I planned the route using a route planner and included enough smaller roads to it so that I could also verify how well the planned schedule will hold. Verifying and testing the scheduling was my primary goal (addition to driving it self) but since I was on the move I also tested this web page update from the road.
My plan was to take some nice pictures from a Finnish nature on the way and send those up here but unfortunately I made my schedule too tight to do any unscheduled stops :( Altough it is pretty lame to run against the clock like that, I really wanted to see how well I can estimate the time that will be spent in these kind of trips. Well, this first try was a disaster. My check point ETA's were missed starting from the very first one. When driving a bike like mine you just have to plan in some time for unexpected problems. In this case, ignition (again) and carburettor problems.
The pictures were taken and send out as an e-mail attachments using Nokia 3650 camera phone. Time stamps on those entries are about the times I took those pictures since I sent out those immedialtelly. Hopefully I can use this functionality in the future on some more interesting, and more loosely planned trip.

It's now my seventh week at home and I'm beginning to be quite eager to get back to work. I even returned to my long lost hobby, electronics, to get a feeling of working :) Here's a picture of test board that's supposed to evolve to a "road dyno" [PIC]. Right now it just measures the speed and the engine RPM. Next thing is to gather that data and transfer it to a PC where it can be prosessed further. I'm not planning, or expecting this thing be able to accurately measure absolute output power. Instead this should be useful tool to see what kind of change there will be in the power and torque curve when some changes are made to the engine.

I updated the "dyno" software to calculate and show the actual (estimated) power. I did a short test run and the biggest power figure seemed to be somewhat above 10kw, equal to about 13hp... well at least the damn thing seems to be working... I did noticed that the speed calculation returned about 25% too small figures which would correct the power to about 20hp but still... Well, as I said, it's not the absolute figures that I'm interested of but the changes at the power curve. I just updated the SW further to store the maximun power and corresponding RPM but I can test that tomorrow at the earliest, if it's not raining (the box isn't water tight).

Well, it's raining here... but I went for a test run anyway. Here's the result [PIC]. As sure as that 20hp yesterday was propably under estimated, this 58hp is too optimistic, unfortunately. At least the speed calculation is still a bit off, giving too much speed this time. The error is now about 5% but since the error in speed is squared when calculating power the effect in power will be more than 10%. That would give a bit more realistic figure of about 53hp. Another thing to investigate is that RPM where the maximum power is reached... it seems a bit low. Well, when I'll get those measurement to a PC it will be more visible what happens in different states of the rev range. Since I'm running drag pipes there should be a visible dip at mid range, right?

I finally got those measurements transferred to PC and prosessed to some more readable form. Well, more or less. There's still some unstability in the speed measurement that will show up in the power curve as sharp peaks. That's where that 58hp propably came from. The real peak hp figure seems to be least less than 30hp. So it seems that it's about time for a head job :(

Some problems with my rear tire [PIC] [PIC]. The tire has only bit over 3000km (abt. 2000 miles) on it so it's certainly not normal. It's just now being changed at no cost since the guy at the shop agreed that there must be some manufacturing problem in it. It's not been ridden when flat, in that case there propably would be same kind of tears at the other side also but there's none. Dunno what's causing that...
I'm still getting the same kind of tire since it seems to have real good mileage and it also feels pretty good when wet. No need to change the manufacturer at this point :)

Well, the season is almost done here in Finland. Maybe couple of weeks is still OK for driving (with street bikes) but then it's over for this summer. Our H-D owners club (www.hdcf.fi) already had a end of the season rally. There are few pictures from that event on my other page (www.saunalahti.fi/~affe2/juttui/latest). The page is unforunately in finnish but that won't matter since I was pretty drunk and I wasn't that keen on writing... it shows :)
I still have that dyno stuff going on and I'm trying to get couple of good measurements before I park my bike to garage

I'm still here. It's just been pretty quiet in this area, nothing to write about...
Yesterday it was 3 deg. celcius (abt. 37 F), today -1C (30F) but dry so perfect weather for riding. Well, maybe not perfect but OK at least. This weekend it may be possible to get some snow but let's see. In 2001 I put the bike in the garage after we got first snow at the beginning of November. Last summer, on the other hand, the riding season was over before the end of August because of the engine problems.
Anyway, now still riding. Not hard but to and from the work at least :)

Still no power measurements.
My wife had to go to a hospital and she's been there for the whole week. I'm lookin after our two sons and the bike isn't much of a transportation vehicle for three of us :-) Hopefully she gets back home next week at the latest.
Now it's already snowing so it might be fun to get the bike to the garage... Well, it's going to warm-up... at least for a while... I hope

OK, now we got some snow [PIC]. It looks that it may take a while before I can ride the bike back to the garage. I think I'll wait for couple of days before giving-up and putting the bike on a trailer. It will warm-up, it WILL... or maybe not...

Yep, still riding. It has been pretty wet lately [PIC] but that's not the real problem, fucking dirt is more annoying. It's unbeliveable how it finds it way even between my ass and the seat [PIC].
Couple of days ago I learned a valuable lesson about the cracks in the parts and vibrations. Couple of day further back I noticed a crack in the back support of the chain guard. Being a small crack I thought that it would have hold-up nicely until the end of my riding season. Wrong!
I was coming home from work, the freeway had just ended and I'm doing 100+ km/h (65 mph). Suddenly I heard a short rattling sound, then a loud crash and the speed dropped, I pulled the clutch. At first I thought that the transmission had blown and kinda like to make it sure I released the clutch a bit. Whe the clutch was released there was a rattling sound again, a bit different but clear enough. I had to pull aside.
When I got the bike stopped I jumped off and immediately saw that the chain was off of the rear sprocket. Even at this time I still thought that there's something REALLY bad happened to the transmission. Then I saw the chain guard folded between the rear wheel and the oiltank. OK, that caused it but what's the status? I slid the chain back and forth and the front sprocket seemed to rotate freely. I was far enough from any intersection to even think that I would push the bike. I decided to take a shot to see if the chain and sprockets (and the transmission) are OK and opened the chain, put it back on and tighened it just that much that it won't jump off. I started the bike and put it on gear, released the clutch and off we went.
I drove the bike to the garage. Hopefully the next thing to learn the hard way Isn't the fact that I should have repalced the sprockets and the chain since I didn't... I just checked those and the rear wheel and drove to home. I'm going to use the bike for commuting for these few days we have before the snow but that's it, also using more rural roads to keep the speeds down.
The lesson? If there is a crack, even a small one, fix it as soon as you can or it may be totally broken before you have the next chance. I guess I was lucky not having the rear wheel locked because that would have probably hit me into ground

Now it's about over for this "summer". Today I'm going to take a last spin and then let the bike rest for a while. There are lots of stuff to do also, for example this morning I had some problems to get the engine started because the starter didn't turn. The starter button is probably broken. It has been a problem already some time but so far it has always worked after some twiggling, this morning... nothing. Luckily I have a kicker also. Unfortunately though, it's also pretty worn out so I did managed to get a good sweat out of that job. Perhaps there's something that I should do with these problems also during winter?
Tonight I'll take some pictures about the bike as it's now, hopefully there will be some change in the appearance by the next spring

OK, that was it for now. The bike looks pretty sad at the moment [PIC].
I'll start working in the near future first by washing her up and then indexing what should be done before spring. Of course half of those things will be left undone but hopefully even the critical ones will be fixed by the end of February... or maybe March, let's see.
I'm starting a new page for the winter season and these stories will then be found through main page

Long time, no see... or something...
Been pretty quiet around here lately. There's a reason for that, the whole family has been sick for couple of weeks now. Just flu but pretty annoying when the youngest is about 5 months old.
Well, I visited the garage today and washed the bike. I also went through the bike to get an idea what must be done, what should be done and what could be done during this winter. One thing is the new starter motor. I got a used starter from a Honda Civic that I'm planning to put in, let's see how it goes. I got a hint (thanks Sepi) that this could be done and since the starter was only 50 euros I thought that what the fuck, let go and try that out.
Well, I'll get back to this when I have something to tell about or something to show. I'm probably starting a new page for the new season so this page won't be updated anymore. The URL http://www.saunalahti.fi/~affe2/hdlog/latest will be redirected to the new page.

V-Twin main page and some older stuff