Hello again from the great state of Maine!
In between all the raindrops we have received the past few weeks I did manage to finish getting all the Evringham Fleet of playtoys into their winter storage spots.
So ... if its November and all the playtoys are put away that must mean it is leaf picking up season here in Vacationland. Well yes it is! On the days it doesn't rain I fire up the lawn tractor and suck up all the leaves into the bagger attachment, dump said leaves into lawn trash bags, load the bags into the truck, and haul them to the recycling center to be made into next year's mulch -- then I do it all over again. I love autumn in New England!
When I'm not busy dealing with leaves I have started to work on my 2018/2019 winter motorcycle restoration project (1967 Yamaha YCS1 180cc Bonanza). As you may recall, this year's project bike came with a twin bike in pretty sad shape as a "parts" bike. I tried to negotiate the deal without the parts bike because I really didn't want to deal with a second bike with already limited space - but as it has turned out I'm glad to have a source of needed parts! I disassembled the "parts" bike several weeks ago and placed all the parts in the basement. Once my other, already restored bikes were put in storage I was able to start looking at what needed to be done on the new project. Since I knew the project bike had some sort of issue with not running on the right hand cylinder - I started there. It didn't take long to find the first problem - broken piston rings on the right piston.
Fortunately the cylinder wall wasn't destroyed by the broken rings so all I needed there was a new piston and some rings. Unfortunately this bike had its cylinders bored out slightly larger than stock at sometime in the past meaning that the parts bike pistons couldn't be used. Good old Ebay came through again with some NOS (New Old Stock) parts to fit! The second problem I found while inside the engine was a bigger issue - the connecting rods on both cylinders had excessive axial clearance and would have to be replaced - and this meant the crankshaft would have to removed from this engine - a total engine disassembly was in store! The good news .... it appeared that the crankshaft on the parts bike was in pretty good condition - the fun news - now both engines have to come completely apart!
A week ago or so I disassembled the parts bike engine to "harvest" its crankshaft. That process went fairly smooth except for removing the generator armature. When these bikes were assembled at the factory some 50 years ago, certain parts like the generator armature were tightened to the crankshaft with a metal to metal tapered fit. In the next 50 years these parts would become one with each other, resisting all human attempts to separate the two. I'll spare you the details -- suffice it to say that it came out in pieces.
Now that I had a good crankshaft available from the parts bike it was time to disassemble the engine from the "good" bike. This time I learned a few things from my first attempts at trying to remove the generator armature - and was successful getting this one off in one piece. This was my plan all along! Learn from the parts bike and apply lessons learned to the "good bike!"
Now for the fun part --obtain some new seals, clean a bunch of parts, and reassemble one good engine out of two. You have to be a motorhead to imagine all the fun ahead!
