Today in part 7 of this series we're going to be building up the rocker assemblies
and setting the tappet clearances, along with a few other jobs here and there
to move the Everyday Bike Project along. Thanks for joining us. Let's get started.
Right next thing you need to do is put the push rod tubes in.
They locate down. Deep down into the engine. You've got the camshaft and camshaft followers,
and they've got little cups on here and they go on to the camshaft followers.
So we've got four of these. There's two short ones, which are the outside ones, and the two long
ones for the middle. So we'll probably start with the middle ones first. Just give them a wipe, just
make sure there's nothing dirty on there at all. We always put a little bit of oil inside the cup.
That locates down onto the other end. So you have a thimble and a cup that just literally goes onto
the top of the thimble. Now one's up and ones down because it's on the sequence of the cam.
It's got one valve open in sequence at the moment.
Alright, so these two shorter ones work from this side of the engine. And the two long ones are on
that side of the engine. Now the exhaust ones. We're just washing this all out because this bike
was all in, the engine sorry, it was all in bits when I picked it up. So I just want to make sure
it hasn't got any contaminants in it, any bits of dirt, grit, we'll wash it all out and
then we can lube it up as we bring it back up. Right I've now taken the whole rocker shaft out
the rockers and just checked it, and I just buffed it up and yeah, it's good.
Just making sure that the holes are clear and it's all hollow inside and the oil can flow. When that
rocker shaft goes through the housing the first thing that's on the other side is a washer.
The washer always goes against the aluminium. Then there's a spring.
The spring is facing then onto the rocker. The other side of the rocker you have a plain washer.
Then we pick up on the other side. So it's a washer against the alley
onto the rocker. And at this end we have the spring again. It's a thrust spring basically.
Then we have a washer. So you never have a spring rubbing on the outer part the aluminium,
on the head. It's always on the rocker side.
Slacking off tappet adjustment as far as we can.
We have a washer, a spring, the rocker, another washer that side.
Have to be a bit careful you don't drop anything down inside the engine now.
I need to turn the engine over a little bit because this valve is
on the sequence of being open. Because it's got washers and things to go through you have to
make sure that the washer is still central. This can be a little bit of a fiddle to do.
That's it, that's gone in now.
I'll just make sure with you, is that you know that we we tend to
use oil on all the running surfaces now. Because I've got this side in,
I'm going to put an oil can up in there and I'm trying to charge that through with a bit of oil.
That'll go through to the other side. We're lubing this shaft up when it goes through
the cylinder head. The supports of the rocker shaft. But we'll just give it an extra bit of
lube. And when it's all assembled we'll put quite a bit of oil over the top of here.
You just give this a gentle little tap in the back.
Now I've left, at the moment, I've left these both out a little bit. I've just been checking
in the manual about the rocker feed and about the oil galleries and the holes. About how they need
to be lined up in a certain position. Don't have to worry because when you push the rocker shaft
through, the gallery will pick the oil up and send it wherever it needs to go basically. There's no
reference that you have to make sure hole has to be lined up with a hole. If it's in the gallery
it will go round to the hole and flow. So our tappet oil feed is a union, then there's a pipe.
So where my screwdriver is would be the union. Oil comes through here into this part of the head,
and it's going down to centre of this rocker shaft assembly here. Comes out the little hole and will
track along the shaft, around the galleries. And then it gets up to this end here, and it goes
back through here and drops down into here. And it does the other side, and down through there.
Just hold the spanner on this end, then we can just pull this nut down.
We don't want the rocker spindle to turn round too far. Although we know we've got
the oil galleries and it should all line up all right. But just keep that in that one position.
Because this wasn't really home as far as it should have been we're
just going to run that round with a bit of very fine wet and dry.
Just polish this up. Just might have got a high spot there somewhere. Just turn that a little bit.
That is home. You could tell by the noise actually it was sitting where it should do. Won't go in any
further than that. That's good. The last job really, main job, we're going to set the valve
clearances. So we need to set the engine at TDC. Doesn't matter which side you set first. But
we're going to set this as it says in the book. We've got the left hand cylinder compression.
The right one with the valves opening. So we come to TDC. We put our little bore gauge in.
Bring it to the top on the rock. So now we're ready to set the exhaust. These are set at 10 thou
in the inlets at 8 thou. So just going to show you again. Right these two valves
you can see are rocking, and these ones now are on compression stroke.
Twin cylinder engine, and people will know, but just to explain that
only one cylinder will fire at one time. So we position this so that the left hand cylinder
is on compression. So the piston is at the top of its stroke. The right hand cylinder
has the valves on the rock. We're setting up this one first. Only one cylinder will fire
on this stroke. The engine will need to turn over one complete revolution, 365 degrees,
to come onto the other cylinder. Then that one will have the valves fully shut and these ones
will be on the point of opening. That's how it works on the twin cylinder. Otherwise it would
be a big single cylinder, it wouldn't work. The configuration wouldn't be right. But that's how
it works. One cylinder is under compression at any one time, as people know. We set this one
up at 10 thou. I've slipped a gauge in here. It's virtually right. And we can set this one, and we
can do one inlet as well on this stroke, and then we can turn it through another rotation and do the
other two valves. We're coming to adjust the valve clearance. So this is threaded, this goes down.
This is what has contact with the valve itself. This is a harden
assembly. And this is the end of the rocker. This is the adjustable part. By moving this we
can either decrease or increase the clearance. So hence why you have a feeler gauge of 10 thou.
Now what we're going to do, we're just going to get it to a point where it's a bit tight. We can
get a nice 10 thou in, which that is now. Turn it a little bit, sorry, turn a little bit more
like that. You need to hold in that position. I'm going to use the open part of the spanner
so you can see me turning it. I'll put that through there, and you should see
me just be able to lock this round. I'm just going to nip that up, not too much pressure.
If I don't hold this adjuster, the adjuster will go round and tighten the clearance down,
and I'll lose my clearance of 10 thou. We'll take that away. We'll just check it again.
We'll put a little bit of a bend on here because the angle again. Now that is a little bit wide so
we're just going to back this off again, put that back in there so it doesn't move back with it,
and just bring it round a bit more. Hold it there, just nip it up. Check that clearance. That's
pretty good. So what I do now, we'll use the ring spanner on its own now. It's the last little bit.
And just give that a good turn. Not over tighten it. Now it's a nice kiss fit. That's 10 thou.
We've just cleaned all the surface area with brake cleaner. What that does, it gets rid of all the
greasy residue from the oil and handling it. If you don't do that when you apply the Wellseal
it won't stick. It'll be all slimy underneath it. This way, it's got rid of the underneath
contamination, and we don't use a great deal as I said before. We spread it well.
But we'll put the gasket on, then we'll put some oil around the rockers and make sure that
all the moving parts have got some oil around them before it gets the oil pressure. As I said before
we don't need too much Wellseal because it will spread out. And with a mascara brush it goes quite
a long way. We're just going to give the rockers and the push rods, the top of the rocker arms,
some lubrication because this is always lubricated on the return side of the oil feed.
So it's all gone through the pump, it's on return back to the oil tank. So it's the last place that's
going to get lubricated. So we just give it a little bit of lube, it will just help it. It's
got quite a lot of oil already on the assembly, but we'll just show you what we normally do.
So we do the spindles on the sides. We've got the spring washers. We do around the tappets.
On the rockers. It's really all the moving parts really. Just give it a little bit of oil, and we can drip
some down onto the valve stem, so it goes down onto the guide. So squirt onto the valve stem.
Through the springs.
You put quite a bit in there because it won't do any harm at all.
Because it will be a little bit dry before it gets the saturation of oil.
We have five plain washers, and these are slightly dished. So they will flatten out when they go
down. The sequence as before. Always start from the middle and work out. But we'd get them down to
where they start to pull on the surface. They are only quarter inch so they don't want to be over tightened.
You know, you can so easy over tighten these, And same thing again, don't overdo it, you'll strip
the threads. Okay, because some of these studs are a little bit older now, and they're okay,
but don't want to overdo the threads. So we're just going to go through, just wind these down.
And start these middle ones. Just get them down to where you feel it coming onto the head.
We're going to tighten these up, now but just noted we have one stud here that's a little
bit short. Don't want to leave that like that. So I'm going to remove this really quickly, take the
stud back out, set the nut into stud, then wind it down. Because I haven't got enough showing I
don't like to leave that. A little tip, if you've got a magnet and you can't get your washer up,
get your magnet put it on there and spin it round. Well nine times out of ten it works. There you go.
It winds it up the spiral of the thread.
Okay we've put two nuts back on the stud. You turn the nut over so that it's got the flat surface
facing the next nut you put down because they are chamfered off. We'll just lock these two up
together. Quite tight. Here's our bottom spanner, and hopefully this stud will come undone.
We just again unlock it.
So what we're doing here, we've just literally lifted the stud up.
And what I want to make sure this time, is that it's slightly backed off a little bit so the nut
will go down further. It'll pick up, then it'll wind it back into the head. It just means we've
got a little bit more thread into the nut itself. Yeah, before the nut wasn't coming through the
threads nearly as far as this. We haven't pulled it down yet but that's better. So we're going to
put all the other washers back on and just pull that back down again. Yeah, don't forget when you
go to put the engine back in the frame or whether you've had it apart, sort of decarbonised it
halfway down, stripped down, put your oil can in there and give it a good charge of oil.
I'm not going to do this now because I'll charge it up it's going to start dripping down here. But
you can get quite a lot of oil in here. And it will help on your
first initial start because you're going to purge the engine anyway. We're going to
get as much oil around the engine as possible before we actually fire it up properly. But that's
what I always do. That can in there, good squirt. So what I do now is we'll put our manifold on.
Right these two gaskets are the inner manifold gaskets. It's easy to put some Wellseal on these.
Then put those straight onto the cylinder head here. So we're just going to give it a little
bit of lube because you don't want an air leak. And it's a place where if you're going to get an
air leak, you'll get an air leak. And once this manifold is on, it won't be disturbed again.
Right this is the main manifold that goes onto the cylinder head. Just removing the old gaskets.
Obviously they're well burnt on there, and we'll make sure we've got everything off of there, and
we'll give this a quick clean up. You obviously don't want any air leaks around this assembly
because this is very close to the cylinder head. On the carburetor side there's an insulator block.
That stops the heat being transmitted through to the carburetor. And series of gaskets. That
doesn't have any sealant on there, it doesn't need it. But it's important to get this clean
and a good seal with new gaskets, on both sides. Okay we're just going to scrape off the lastest
gasket. Swiss army knife, anything really, but don't cut the aluminium. I just literally
just scrape it over. You can use your thumb and your finger. But you just want to try and just
break that gasket down. It won't peel off because it's burnt on there.
If you keep that blade flat on there you won't do any damage.
Always do this criss-cross diagonally. Just pull them up,
just so they just nip first. Get all four just nipped.
Alright, now we're just going to do the last tighten up. Don't over tighten this.
On this particular engine, on Thunderbolt, it hasn't got a
rev counter. But this is where the drive would be. It drives off the oil pump.
So we're just going to take the cover off, replace the gasket, as we've got one in the gasket set.